Ivanka Trump Slammed For Tweeting About Chicago Gun Violence Immediately After El Paso And Dayton Shootings
Ivanka Trump is facing backlash from people in Chicago and around the country for a recent tweet shifting focus away from the deadly acts of terrorism in Dayton, Ohio and El Paso, Texas, and redirecting it towards Chicago’s gun violence statistics.
In a pair of tweets sent on August 6, the president’s daughter said we should not forget about Chicago’s gun violence epidemic in light of the weekend’s mass shootings that killed at least 31 people, many of them Black.
“As we grieve over the evil mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, let us not overlook that Chicago experienced its deadliest weekend of the year,” she began in a Twitter thread.
“With 7 dead and 52 wounded near a playground in the Windy City — and little national outrage or media coverage — we mustn’t become numb to the violence faced by inner city communities every day," she wrote.
Trump’s tweets caught the attention of many people around the country, including Chicago’s own Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
During a news conference Monday, Lightfoot corrected Ivanka’s tweet, which was factually incorrect, the Chicago Tribune reported.
“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,” Lightfoot said at the press conference. “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.”
Lightfoot went on to say if Trump really cared about the people of Chicago she could have at least reached out to the city’s officials before sending the tweets.
“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,” Lightfoot added. “I’m not going to be distracted by nonsense tweets from people who don’t know what they’re talking about.”
Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson also made a statement correcting Trump’s tweet.
“That’s not what happened,” Johnson said. “She’s conflating the whole weekend’s activity into one incident.”
People on Twitter also slammed the first daughter for sending the tweets when many people were still mourning the loss of the victims from the two mass shootings.
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On Tuesday, a spokeswoman for Ivanka Trump issued a statement saying while the numbers in the tweet were “misleading,” she still stood by her sentiments.
“Her point remains the same, we cannot ignore the gun violence that happens in cities across this country on a daily basis,” the spokeswoman said, according to HuffPost.
