Fashion-designer-turned-presidential-advisor Ivanka Trump may brand herself as the more liberal member of the Trump family, but she’s always happy to trot out her father’s rhetoric whenever he faces backlash. After two mass shootings in less than 24 hours hit El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, one of the shooters was identified as white supremacist and a Trump supporter who used the president’s exact words as motivation for his murders. Ivanka was quick to tweet out that the violence in inner cities, which most of her father’s supporters are more likely to associate with black people, are being ignored in the focus on racism and domestic terrorism.
While the larger issue of her attempts to overshadow the rising dangers of white supremacy are profound, she also twisted the details in order to fit her narrative. The shootings in Chicago did not happen at a playground at all, although some did occur near a park. However, the seven who died and the 52 who were wounded occurred in multiple places across Chicago over a period of three days and not, as the president’s daughter tried to indicate, in a single event.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot was furious over the inaccuracies and the attempts to deflect from Trump’s stoking of racist ideology. According to the Chicago Tribune, Lightfoot responded to the tweets by saying:
‘It wasn’t a playground, it was a park. It wasn’t seven dead. It wasn’t 52 wounded in one incident, which is what this suggests. It’s misleading. It’s important when we’re talking about people’s lives to actually get the facts correct, which one can easily do if you actually cared about getting it right.’
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, @chicagosmayor, responded to Ivanka Trump's tweet saying, "She got the numbers wrong, she got the location wrong, that’s the danger of trying to govern via tweet." Lightfoot said her office reached out to Ivanka Trump & there has been no response. https://t.co/5oTLU9XOYm
— Kelsey Walsh (@Kjwalsh_news) August 6, 2019
Lightfoot noted that Ivanka’s tweets weren’t geared toward being part of the solution, which she could have been had she reached out in order to understand the actual facts. Instead, it’s clear that her tweets reached a large audience of followers and spread disinformation solely to distract from the criticism Trump faces following the shooting in El Paso.
‘That’s the danger of somebody with a platform and audience … that doesn’t know what they’re talking about and getting the fundamental facts wrong that they can easily figure out if they had the decency to actually reach out to us if they wanted to be a constructive and engaged partner.’
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot had strong words for Ivanka Trump Tuesday after the president's daughter tweeted inaccurate information about violence in Chicago over the weekend. https://t.co/98PY0hGk97
— ABC 7 Chicago (@ABC7Chicago) August 6, 2019
However, Lightfoot also stated that she wasn’t going to allow Trump’s oldest daughter to distract her from focusing on the real issues. Trump’s supporters may like the focus on the inner city areas of Chicago because it furthers their racist ideologies that black Americans are the true danger, Lightfoot has a job to do and isn’t taking the bait.
‘What I’m focused on is actually helping run the city of Chicago and working hard every day with the superintendent and his leadership team to keep people in our city safe. I’m not going to be distracted by nonsense tweets from people who don’t know what they’re talking about.’
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