Hot Takes: Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Gets Roasted for Hypocritical Tweet About Book-Banning

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is at it again, this time posting a bizarre tweet on Saturday which read: “In Texas, reading any damn book I choose. No banning of books or thought. Ever.”

In Texas, reading any damn book I choose. No banning of books or thought. Ever. pic.twitter.com/zGFN3dxvNx

— Lori Lightfoot (@LoriLightfoot) May 14, 2022

The tweet is so wrong on so many levels. First and most obvious: she’s basically saying, “ain’t Texas grand?” Leftists spend entirely too much of their time bashing states like Texas and Florida, so it’s wild to see her praising The Lone Star State’s freedoms. It’s similar to when AOC and the dim-witted Eric Swallwell used to rip Florida’s COVID policies—then jet down there for vacations to escape the Draconian policies of their own states.

Two: where is the book she’s reading in the photo, To Kill A Mockingbird, banned? Hint: blue states. Some California schools banned it in November 2020 over possible racist concerns, while Seattle banned it from the curriculum in January 2022.

It evokes memories of an equally idiotic tweet by California Governor Gavin Newsom in March:

Reading some banned books to figure out what these states are so afraid of. pic.twitter.com/z6eJ01NZJe

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) March 31, 2022

“Reading some banned books to figure out what these states are so afraid of,” he says, seemingly not realizing that the book on top of his pile is the aforementioned “To Kill A Mockingbird,” banned in many parts of his own state. This complete lack of awareness would be funny if the man wasn’t in charge of the fifth-largest economy in the world.

Reactions to Lightfoot’s tweet was not kind, as users pointed out that she might want to pay more attention to the epidemic of crime in Chicago instead of the wonders of Texas:

I don’t get it. Was this an attempted dunk on Texas? Because the takeaway here is that in Texas, she can read any damn book she chooses. https://t.co/yB7WYlXP7U

— Philip Klein (@philipaklein) May 15, 2022

From Republican Virginia state delegate Nick Freitas:

Wise choice. With all the violence in the city you manage, I can see why you want to go somewhere safe to read. https://t.co/xEKWff4aRm

— Nick Freitas (@NickForVA) May 15, 2022

From our own Bonchie:

It’d Dem school boards that have removed that book, Lori. How do you constantly manage to be so off base?

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) May 15, 2022

The Lightfoot tweet comes as Chicago continues to experience horrific levels of violence, with shootings and murders a weekend staple. On the same day she posted her tweet, a huge crowd gathered in Chicago’s Millenium Park with multiple fights and gunshots breaking out. A 16-year old boy was shot and killed during the fracas. According to a 2021 report by Axios, gun violence has exploded, with some neighborhoods seeing over a 100 percent increase in fatal shootings. Meanwhile the Chicago Sun-Times wrote in a December 2021 article:

The numbers are far worse when you look at fatal shootings since 2019, before the pandemic: West Pullman, 450% higher, North Lawndale, 104% higher, East Garfield Park, 100% higher.

The numbers reflect the steady rise in gun violence across the city over the last two years.

Chicago has seen about 4% more homicides this year than this time last year, and 61% more than the same period in 2019. At least 4,300 people have been shot, 7% above the same time last year and almost 70% above the same time frame in 2019.

Instead of reading books in Texas, Lightfoot might want to spend her time figuring out what the heck is going on in her own city. She seems to have more important things to do however, like issuing calls for violence:

To my friends in the LGBTQ+ community—the Supreme Court is coming for us next. This moment has to be a call to arms.

— Lori Lightfoot (@LoriLightfoot) May 10, 2022

She denied it was a push for disorder, of course, because that’s what people like her do, but the words speak for themselves. A “call to arms” means just what it says—get violent. If there was any question, she then whistled out this to her supporters: