Video News Clips: In Their Own Words

Watch As Chicago Resident Refuses To Co-Sign Dems’ Preferred Narrative On Crime

[Screenshot/CNN]

A resident of Chicago, Illinois, on Tuesday rejected Democrats’ narrative that crime has gone down in her city and instead praised President Donald Trump’s idea to deploy the National Guard.

Ameenah Haqque told CNN law enforcement correspondent Whitney Wild that Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson should “be on board” with Trump’s plan to combat crime. While Wild insisted that crime had dropped, Haqque assured the reporter that she and others in the city do not “at all” feel safer.

“The crime has dropped since 2024, do you feel like the city feels safer?” Wild asked.

“No, not at all,” Haqque replied. “No, especially with the police being defunded.”

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Trump confirmed on Friday that his administration is considering sending the National Guard to combat crime in Chicago once he is finished cleaning up Washington, D.C.

“Chicago is a mess. You have an incompetent mayor, grossly incompetent, and we’ll straighten that one out probably next, that will be our next one after this, and it won’t even be tough. And the people in Chicago, Mr. Vice President, are screaming for us to come,” Trump said in the Oval Office.

The number of homicides in Chicago reached a 25-year high in 2021, and have remained significantly higher than the numbers recorded in the last decade, The Chicago Tribune reported. Aside from June 2014, no other single month of June has had fewer than 40 murders in Chicago since at least 1970, according to WTTW, a PBS affiliate.

There have currently been 262 homicides in Chicago as of Aug. 26, which is 117 fewer incidents in comparison to 2024, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Pritzker and Johnson have accused Trump of spreading misinformation about crime in Chicago and begged for him to stay out of the city during a Monday press conference. In an attempt to convince Americans that Chicago is not a “hellhole,” Pritzker took a video of a noticeably low-crime area of the city and posted it to his X account.

Johnson and the governor also stated that Trump’s potential deployment of the National Guard would be a violation of the U.S. Constitution.