The special counsel appointed last week in Washington likely has a lot of work to do before he can determine if the nation’s new rulers are traitors.
Meanwhile, here in Chicago, we got fresh, strong proof that the Trumpists are haters.
On Tuesday afternoon, presidential loyalist and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee tweeted: “On way to Chicago for speech. Expecting to have to run from plane dodging bullets like Hillary did in Bosnia when under sniper fire! Yikes!”
Ha ha, get it? There’s crime in Chicago! Isn’t that just hilarious?!
Huckabee, whose daughter works for President Donald Trump, obviously was hoping to suck up to the boss with his imbecilic and insensitive tweet.
OPINION
Trump himself has sought repeatedly to draw attention to the violence here, once saying people in the inner city of Chicago are “living in hell.” Nobody can believe he’s doing it because he really cares about his nation’s third-largest city. Like so many of his social media misfires, the president’s tone on this topic betrays such glee — we can only think he’s utterly insincere.
There’s probably nothing more than politics and ego behind Trump’s statements of mock concern for Chicago. From the president’s perspective, this was Democratic predecessor Barack Obama’s hometown and Democrats have run the town for a century, so all of our problems are excellent fodder for taking shots at them.
Now, @GovMikeHuckabee has gone further, taking the favorite presidential punching bag and turning it into a lame punch line.
I emailed Huckabee to ask what about the hundreds of murders here he finds to be such rich comedic material. Aide Erica Freeman replied, “Unfortunately, due to his schedule he isn’t available.”
Freeman also didn’t answer my question about what precisely he was doing in Chicago. I’d love to know where Huckabee was speaking or who actually decided to associate with him during his visit. I’d guess that these Huckabee-embracing neighbors of ours wouldn’t want it publicly known that they hung out with him.
Maybe he didn’t wish to expand on his tweet in an interview because he says he and so many others like him deeply distrust the media.
Anyway, he makes so many idiotic comments, his schedule would really be beyond packed if he had to justify a fraction of them.
On May 5, Huckabee tweeted, “For Cinco de Mayo, I will drink an entire jar of hot salsa and watch old Speedy Gonzales cartoons and speak Spanish all day.”
Huckabee was not as eager to joke around when his White House spin-doctor daughter was ridiculed in a “Saturday Night Live” skit. Instead, he accused the comedy show of sexism.
Huckabee didn’t see fit, though, to specifically mention the many charges of sexual harassment against Roger Ailes when he tweeted that the Fox News Channel founder’s death last week left him “deeply saddened.”
OK, we get that Huckabee sees himself as a champion of “real Americans” who properly revere “God, guns, grits and gravy.” And, yes, we know many in the South and in other rural areas of the country have plenty of problems, too.
Somehow, none of those issues are the fault of the people they’ve elected locally — who, by they way, are mostly Republicans. Their problems, they say, are something that’s pretty much entirely inflicted on them by impious urban elites.
It’s truly a shame so many of us city slickers have made poor rural Americans the butt of jokes for generations. I’d like to think that’s not considered at all acceptable any more.
But Huckabee proves again that red-state America now increasingly is getting great amusement from the blood that’s flowing in true-blue Chicago.
And he’s shown us just how low some on his side will go to try to gain political advantage from the misery of fellow Americans.
