Lightfoot lashes out at Ivanka Trump for shining the light on city’s violence but misstating facts

Mayor Lori Lightfoot lashed out at First Daughter Ivanka Trump on Tuesday for shining a spotlight on Chicago violence — and, according to the mayor, getting her facts wrong.

“As we grieve over the evil mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, let us not overlook that Chicago experienced its deadliest weekend of the year,” Trump, a White House aide to her father, tweeted.

“With 7 dead and 52 wounded near a playground in the Windy City — and little national outrage or media coverage — we mustn’t become numb to the violence faced by inner city communities every day.”

Lightfoot was livid — and not only because the Twitter blast came on the day after the mayor accused President Donald Trump of “blowing every racist, xenophobic dog whistle … and when you do that, animals come out.”

The mayor said Ivanka Trump got her facts wrong and was spreading them like wildfire to her 6.8 million followers.

“That’s the danger of somebody with a platform and audience [who] doesn’t know what they’re talking about and getting the fundamental facts wrong, that they could easily figure out if they had the decency to actually reach out to us if they wanted to be a constructive and engaged partner,” Lightfoot said.

“She got the numbers wrong. She got the location wrong. That’s the danger of trying to govern via tweet. If they want to help, they should actually call us ... and we would offer them specific ways in which the federal government could actually partner with us to help address the issues on the ground.”

Lightfoot said she reached out to Ivanka Trump, with whom she met personally during an inaugural trip to Washington D.C. in April. So far, there has been no response.

And where exactly did the president’s daughter stray from the facts?

“She said seven killed and 52 shot near a playground. That’s not what happened. She’s conflating the whole weekend activity into one incident,” Police Supt. Eddie Johnson said.

Seven people in total were killed citywide in weekend violence, according to figures compiled by the Chicago Sun-Times. In one incident near a playground in Douglas Park, seven people were injured, but no one was killed.

Lightfoot added, “It’s misleading.”

It also wasn’t the deadliest weekend of the year, according to figures compiled by the Sun-Times. Nine people were killed on a weekend in mid-July, while eight were killed in early June.

An email from a White House official to the Chicago Sun-Times on Tuesday night acknowledged the tweet as “misleading.”

“Ivanka has appreciated getting to know Mayor Lightfoot, respects her commitment to addressing this issue and looks forward to continuing the conversation around this issue, workforce development and economic opportunity for all.

“To the extent that her quote was misleading in implying that all of the shooting incidents occurred in one location, it remains important to note that there were 7 deaths and 52 wounded across the city, resulting in one of the deadliest weekends in the city this year. Her point remains the same, we cannot ignore the gun violence that happens in cities across this country on a daily basis,” the official’s statement said.

The mayor said she has “no idea” whether or not Ivanka Trump is lashing back at her for laying the blame for mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton squarely at the president’s feet.

“What I’m focused on ... is working hard every day with the superintendent and his leadership team to keep people in our city safe. I’m not gonna be distracted by nonsense tweets from people who don’t know what they’re talking about,” she said.

‘Peaceful until the late night’

On Tuesday, Lightfoot held her weekly “accountability” meeting with police brass that follows every violent summer weekend.

She said two major incidents — both of them “gang-related, with some narcotics nexis,” as Johnson put it — turned the West Side into a war zone. One of them was “literally a petty fight” that ended in retaliation, the mayor said.

“The day was peaceful until the late night on Saturday into Sunday. We know those are challenging times,” she said.

Particularly problematic is the period from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m., she said. She said officials are looking into ways “to get people off the streets at that time.”

“We are meeting with our street outreach partners and doing an all-hands-on deck approach because what I call the gap time is where we’re seeing a lot of the danger,” she said.

Bonds too low?

Lightfoot also intensified her running battle with Chief Cook County Judge Timothy Evans over the role judges have in gun violence. She held up photographs of automatic weapons and high-powered ammunition seized Friday night from alleged gunmen who she said were later released on bonds of $10,000.

“These are custom automatic weapons. This is called a drum magazine that can hold 200-plus bullets,” Lightfoot said. “And they were caught with armor-piercing weapons. The only reason that you want to have armor-piercing weapons is that you want to kill police officers.”

She said she needs “to understand from the judges who think that these people are not dangers to the community how I explain that to people on the West Side and on the South Side who, in many instances, are living in a war zone.”

Pressed on what would be appropriate for those offenders, Lightfoot said, “Detention with no bond.” Anything short of that, she said, sends a message to residents of those neighborhoods that “nobody cares about them.”

Provided by Chicago police

National Night Out

Lightfoot and Johnson were among a group of officials who mingled with West Side residents Tuesday evening at a neighborhood outing at Moore Park, 5058 W. Adams St., in Austin.

The event was part of National Night Out, an annual, nationwide effort every August to build police-community relations and fight gun violence. The mayor and top cop shook hands at a barbecue, and Lightfoot threw out the first pitch for a boys baseball game.

”We need to make sure as adults that we’re doing everything that we can to protect these children,” Lightfoot told the crowd. “It’s critically important.”

U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., and Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton were also in attendance.

Another National Night Out event was held in Lawndale, which was home to much of the weekend’s violence.