White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday compared Chicago’s murder rate to those of Islamabad and New Delhi while defending President Donald Trump’s new executive order authorising federal intervention in the city.“We’ve been seeing the governor of Illinois parading out there and saying that there’s nothing wrong with Chicago… He doesn’t need President Trump’s help,” Leavitt said at a press conference.“It’s been less than a day since the tragedy happened, and we have federal law enforcement on the ground assisting local law enforcement… As for Chicago and cracking down on crime… we have seen the Governor of Illinois parading out there saying that there’s nothing wrong with Chicago… the residents of Chicago beg to differ and the statistics beg to differ,” said Leavitt in a press conference.Leavitt stressed that Chicago’s violence problem is long-running. “For 13 consecutive years, Chicago has had the most murders of any US city. That is unacceptable,” she said, noting that the city’s arrest rate stood at just 16 percent of nearly 148,000 reported crimes this year.“Just last year, Chicago’s murder rate per capita was … more than double the murder rate in Islamabad and nearly 15 times more than Delhi,” she added.
Clash with Chicago leadership
Leavitt’s remarks came days after Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order instructing city agencies and police not to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement operations. The directive bars local police from assisting federal authorities in civil immigration enforcement, patrols, traffic stops, checkpoints, or arrests.Trump escalated the feud in a Truth Social post, branding Johnson “incompetent” while pointing to Washington, DC’s crime record.“The incompetent Mayor of Chicago just stated that, in DC, where crime has been brought down to almost nothing, there have been no murders in 9 days, something which hasn’t happened in years, and people are safe again, only nine people have been arrested. That is wrong, hundreds of criminals have been held, captured, and arrested, and their guns have been taken away. DC IS SAFE AND BOOMING!!!” he wrote.Vice President JD Vance also backed the administration’s stance during a trip to Wisconsin. “Chicago has had a lot of crime problems. Why is it that you have mayors and governors who are angrier about Donald Trump offering to help them than they are about the fact that their own residents are being carjacked and murdered in the streets?” he said.
