Dem Mayor Brings Up Richard Nixon While Explaining Why Over 100 People Were Just Shot In His City

Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson evoked an unexpected name Monday while discussing the reason behind a spate of gun violence over the weekend — former President Richard Nixon.

Police said Monday that over 100 people had been shot — 19 fatally, including one police officer — over the July 4th holiday weekend across Chicago. Johnson hosted a press conference on Monday to address the incidents and more broadly Chicago’s problems with violence and crime, and appeared to claim that the reason the city is suffering from gun violence was because Nixon won in 1968 after then-President Lyndon B. Johnson decided not to seek reelection.

“What we’ve experienced over the weekend is unacceptable and we didn’t get here overnight. And everyone knows that. Let’s tell the full story of what happened,” Johnson told reporters on Monday. “Black death has unfortunately been accepted in this country for a very long time.”

“We had a chance 60 years ago to get at the root causes. And people mocked President Johnson, and we ended up with Richard Nixon.”

Johnson did not elaborate on his remarks about Nixon. He also spoke of what Chicago plans to do to crack down on gun violence, mourning the deaths of those fatally shot over the weekend and warning that “there will be will consequences” for the criminals responsible, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.