Chicago’s lefty Mayor Brandon Johnson blamed former President Richard Nixon, who resigned from the presidency in 1974 and died in 1994, for the Windy City’s crippling crime problem — after a bloody holiday weekend in which 19 people were killed and more than 100 were injured in shootings.
“Black death has been unfortunately been accepted in this country for a very long time,” the mayor said Monday at a press conference held to address Chicago’s out-of-control gun violence problem.
“We had a chance 60 years ago to get at the root causes. And people mocked President Johnson, and we ended up with Richard Nixon,” he said without elaborating.
Johnson’s puzzling blame-shifting quickly went viral on social media. A post on X isolating the clip of the mayor holding Tricky Dick responsible for his city’s woes was viewed more than 2.6 million times within 24 hours, drawing thousands of comments ridiculing his outlandish claim.
“Uh oh. Looks like Biden isn’t the only one who needs a cognitive exam,” one X user mused.
“This guy does know he’s actually in charge of controlling this violence now, right?” another asked, incredulously.
The Richard Nixon Foundation itself also weighed in with a post defending the 37th president against Johnson’s baseless accusation.
“Mayor Johnson’s reference to President Nixon is gratuitous and the facts are not on his side in his characterization of Richard Nixon and the Nixon administration’s civil rights record,” the foundation posted on X in a thread outlining some of the administration’s achievements.
Johnson is no stranger to blaming others for Chicago’s many ongoing problems, even after more than a year in office.
In November, the mayor swiftly threw his predecessor Lori Lightfoot under the bus for the city’s migrant crisis, which he says he “inherited.”
He also accused conservatives of unfairly painting the city as a crime-ridden hellscape, which he baselessly claimed was motivated by racial animosity.
“They’re still mad that a black man is free in this country,” Johnson said at a press conference at the time. “This is nothing new.”
He went on to blame “right-wing extremism” for “targeting Democratically run cities that are led by people of color.”
Crime statistics published by Chicago Police show a slight decrease in gun violence over last year for the week ending June 30, and shootings down 27% year to date compared to its 2021 peak.
However, during the 28-day period leading up to June 30, shooting incidents spiked 12% over the same period last year.
A media spokesman for Mayor Johnson declined to comment when reached by The Post Tuesday afternoon.
