Former Burr Ridge mayor Mickey Straub. | website
Former Burr Ridge mayor Mickey Straub. | website
Former Burr Ridge Mayor Mickey Straub blasted U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s opposition to President Trump’s offer of assistance to curb looters in Chicago as '‘anti-American'’ and ‘'shameful.''
“The cops are running scared because they can't quell the behavior,” Straub told the DuPage Policy Journal. “Without accountability, bad behavior spreads.”
Straub is responding to a June 3 tweet on Twitter by Duckworth stating, “Our military is one of the most diverse institutions in this country. And for Donald Trump to pervert it, politicize it and use it against fellow Americans exercising their constitutional rights sickens me to the core.”
“It's a shame that she is anti-American and politicizing an offer of help,” Straub said in an interview.
Trump announced that he would send in military troops after Chicago erupted into “No justice no peace” protests led by Black Lives Matter, an international human rights organization that demanded the arrest of Derek Chauvin, the police officer who pinned an unarmed George Floyd to the ground and strangled him to death with his knee May 25.
Chauvin was ultimately arrested and charged with murder on the third day of rallies, some of which have turned into episodes of looting that Trump and other government officials believe have been instigated by Antifa, a far-left, antifascist, non-unified network of activists. The group believes more aggressive resistance to the Nazis in pre-World War II Germany would have kept Adolf Hitler from coming into power, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
“Gov. J.B. Pritzker, [Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot] and this senator think they can contain the looting themselves but clearly they haven't been able to handle the issue because things are out of control,” Straub said.
On June 1, it was reported in Business Insider that the extreme right-wing group Identity Evropa called for violence and looting in white neighborhoods on Twitter under the guise of being Antifa or BLM members.
In a video embedded within the tweet, Duckworth went on to label Trump, “a draft-dodging wannabe tin-pot dictator," and ended with, “I am sickened to the core by this man.”
Straub said bad-mouthing Trump isn’t helping to control the mayhem.
“The protests have been hijacked by criminals,” Straub said. “The idea of bringing in military troops is to intimidate. No one will mess with the military but they do mess with the police.”
As previously reported in Chicago City Wire, Cook County State's Attorney Kim Fox allegedly isn't detaining any looters that are caught because the courts are closed while ABC reported that Pritzker deployed the Illinois National Guard troops to the suburbs June 1 after Lightfoot announced a city curfew May 30.
"Government officials have to stop with this COVID-19 stuff,” Straub said. “This has gone on long enough.”
The Department of Health reported 126,890 coronavirus cases in Illinois, as of June 6, and 5,964 deaths.
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