Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, delivered a speech Aug. 25, criticizing President Donald Trump's plan to send the National Guard into Chicago, as he did earlier in the month in DC.
Crime is falling in Chicago, Pritzker noted, as it was in DC before Trump called in the National Guard there.
Trump and Pritzker, a Democrat, have traded barbs for months, with the president calling Pritzker an "alarmist" and a "slob," and the governor calling Trump a "wannabe dictator," who is destroying American democracy. The president also called the city's Black mayor "incompetent, grossly incompetent."
Here are some key excerpts from the governor's speech.
I want to speak plainly about the moment that we are in and the actual crisis, not the manufactured one, that we are facing in this city, and as a state, and as a country. If it sounds to you like I am alarmist, that is because I am ringing an alarm, one that I hope every person listening will heed, both here in Illinois and across the country.
