‘Quit stunting’: Chicago mayor invokes hip-hop slang to blast Trump’s threat to send troops to city

Mayor Brandon Johnson explains why he believes President Donald Trump doesn’t really care about addressing crime in America’s urban cities.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson excoriated President Donald Trump amid his constant war of words with the president, who vowed to send U.S. military troops to the Windy City to address crime.

“This president has declared war on poor people,” said Johnson during a Tuesday interview on MSNBC’s “The Weeknight.” Pointing to the recent federal “crime emergency” that Trump declared in Washington, D.C.—despite crime data showing a historic 30-year low—Johnson said, “If you look at the arrests that he made…the vast majority of them were for traffic offenses as well as citations and misdemeanors.”

Chicago’s 57th mayor continued, “This president is not serious about driving violence down in the city of Chicago…This is about…distracting people away from his failures.” He added, “This president, I believe, has caused so much turmoil, not just across America, but around the globe.”

Mayor Johnson, 49, invoked ’90s and early aughts hip-hop slang to best describe the executive actions of President Trump, which he previously compared to Germany’s Nazi era.

“When the labor numbers don’t work out in his favor, he puts forth another stunt. When his illegal activity and his proclivities are exposed, he puts forth another political stunt,” said Johnson. “You know, I grew up in the ’90s. He needs to quit stunting and actually do his job by investing in people. That’s how we drive violence down.”

On Tuesday, President Trump told reporters at the White House that he had an “obligation” to send the military to Chicago, a majority-Black city. “We’re going in,” he said in the Oval Office, intentionally withholding when he would take such action. Earlier that day, a federal judge ruled that Trump’s deployment of the California National Guard was illegal. The Trump administration said it will appeal that decision, likely setting up a landmark Supreme Court case that would determine just how broad the power of the presidency is.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, during a news conference on Tuesday, warned that the Trump administration was already staging the Texas National Guard for deployment in Illinois, and would extend its federal takeover in Chicago to execute mass immigration raids in the city.

In response to Trump’s threat of militarizing Chicago, Mayor Johnson said he is prepared to fight back.

“We have sued this government, the federal administration, multiple times—over 40 cases. We saw one where we just beat the Trump administration when he tried to withhold resources from cities like Chicago, who are welcoming cities,” Johnson told MSNBC. The mayor also signed a “Protecting Chicago” executive order, which is aimed at protecting the constitutional rights of Chicago residents and orders the Chicago Police Department not to cooperate with federal law enforcement or U.S. armed forces within the city.

Johnson said if Trump is really concerned about addressing crime in Chicago as he claims, he would not have cut hundreds of millions of dollars in community violence intervention programs and reached out to him directly to learn what has worked in the city, which has seen decades-low drops in crime.

“[We’re] building affordable funds, standing up for working people, making sure that we have employment opportunities for our young people, making sure that we’re investing in our police department with strategies that work,” said the Chicago mayor. “He should ask more questions. That’s not how we secure and build democracy. It’s the antithesis to what we stand for, and that’s why, in Chicago, we’re going to fight back.”