Left-wing Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson refused to directly address the question as to whether or not he will block President-elect Donald Trump’s deportation efforts to get criminal migrants out of the country. Breitbart reports, in an appearance on CNN host Victor Blackwell’s “First of All” podcast on Saturday, Johnson chose to slam Trump’s immigration policies in addition to others while deflecting from the important question being asked of him.
Blackwell began the podcast asking Johnson to respond to the prompt, “Let’s start here your reaction to Homan saying he’s going to come after you if you stand in his way.”
“Well, you know, unfortunately — first of all, good morning and Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to the people of the globe,” Johnson began. “Look the president elect and the former president of the United States of America, Trump, has demonstrated an incredible disdain for people, and my responsibility as Mayor of the City of Chicago is to invest in people, to protect people, and connect them to the resources that are ultimately needed in order to build not just a better, stronger, safer Chicago, but to build in the economy that’s sustainable.”
The mayor then added more anti-Trump talking points to his answer. A former public school teacher, Johnson momentarily shifted the focus away from deportations to Chicago’s public schools before moving on to public housing. The mayor argued that Trump has also shown “disdain” towards “lovers of public education,” saying that the President-elect is “dead set on abolishing the entire education department.”
Trump has “shown an incredible animus towards public housing,” Johnson continued, adding that Trump has “demonstrated contempt toward vouchers, which would ultimately make it hard for families to access affordable homes.”
Deflecting from the question even further, Johnson turned his attention to Trump having “shown a great deal of evilness towards the Department of the Environment,” adding “He doesn’t believe in science.”
With Blackwell’s initial question still going unanswered, the podcast host returned to it playing a clip of Trump’s border enforcer Tom Homan asking for police departments to let Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents locate criminal illegal immigrants to help the feds with deportation efforts.
“I do not want them to be immigration officers,” Homan said in the clip, speaking of local law enforcement, “I want them, when they arrest an illegal for a serious crime, I’m just asking them to tell us where to find them.”
Blackwell’s follow up question to Johnson was, “So let me, let me ask you specifically, if you have someone in CPD who takes custody of someone who fits that scenario, that profile, accused of a violent crime in the country illegally, does local law allow you to inform ICE? And will you do that?”
Johnson still refused to directly answer the question, choosing instead to go on a rant about Chicago being a sanctuary city and its history as such, and used his time to criticize Trump’s border enforcer and the Trump administration for “an abominable ignorance that…continues to displace and cause chaos.”
According to Breitbart, by the end of the podcast segment, listeners never got an answer from the mayor on whether or not he intended to use local police officers to oppose ICE agents upon finding criminal illegal immigrants.