OAN Staff Abril Elfi
6:09 PM – Wednesday, September 3, 2025
Former Democrat Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has asserted that President Donald Trump is “making up his own” facts regarding Chicago’s crime rate.
Lightfoot (D-Ill.) accused President Trump of “making up” data about the crime rate in Chicago to justify an expected deployment of the National Guard — during an appearance with CNN’s Kasie Hunt on “The Arena.”
“Listen, the crime rate has gone down. You heard the numbers of decreases in homicides and shootings and other violent crimes that have gone down and have been going down for the last four years,” Lightfoot said.
Advertisement“We can‘t ignore that because the president is making up his own facts,” she continued. “And we also know there are red cities in red states that have higher per capita rates of gun violence and other violent crime that we‘re not hearing coming out of the president‘s mouth as the places where he really wants to go.”
On Tuesday, President Trump expressed that it was a matter of when, not if, he would deploy National Guard troops to Chicago, citing the city’s issues with aggravated assault, sexual assault, homicide, robbery, theft, and more.
“Well, we’re going in. I didn’t say when. We’re going in,” Trump said. “Look, I have an obligation. This isn’t a political thing. I have an obligation.”
Local authorities reported that at least 54 shootings occurred in 37 incidents in Chicago just over Labor Day weekend, which ended “in most [cases], with no suspect in custody,” according to AP News.
Officials also stated that the victims of the fatal shootings include at least two women and three men, as well as two others. The names of the deceased have not yet been publicly released.
“At least 54 people were shot in Chicago over the weekend, 8 people were killed. The last two weekends were similar,” the president wrote Tuesday in a post on Truth Social, later referencing Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D). “Chicago is the worst and most dangerous city in the World, by far. Pritzker needs help badly, he just doesn’t know it yet,”
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