CHICAGO, IL — Don’t let Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s phony rage about Jussie Smollett getting off easy fool you, America. He’s auditioning to score a gig as an angry know-it-all pundit on a national lefty news network.
Chicago’s lame-duck boss has been campaigning to rewrite his mayoral legacy of failure for months while the city eagerly awaits his successor. His City Hall Spin Machine has been pumping out as many as four happy press releases a day. If Rahm’s not cutting ribbons, he’s begging New York Times reporters for favorable news stories, and who knows what else, to pimp his revisionist history.
These days, every tweet he sends, podcast he records, every single move he makes aims to get people to forget the truth: Emanuel’s administration passed a historic property tax increase, shut down 50 public schools, closed mental health clinics, and left the city on the brink of a financial meltdown that made winning a third term impossible.
Emanuel’s Smollett outrage is a smoke show.
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In Chicago, nobody’s buying the outrage after Emanuel, the self-styled political mastermind, left the Chicago Democratic Machine in such shambles that it destroyed itself, unable to get a guy named Daley in the mayoral run-off election. If Rahm had the guts to run for a third term, he’d get crushed, according to a recent poll that showed 63 percent of voters would cast ballots for anybody else.
In his post-City Hall life, Emanuel needs liberals on both coasts to love him, and Trump-loving conservatives to revile him, if he’s going to make it as TV news actor.
That’s why Emanuel unleashed his mobster-esque alter ego, “Rahmbo”, in an attempt to capitalize on the public relations crisis created when Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s conflict of interest served up her office, and Smollett, as villains easily slayed in the court of public opinion.
Without an ounce of self-awareness, Emanuel told reporters he’s defending Chicago’s reputation — which, by the way, he helped drag through the dirt for eight years — from harm by a prime-time thespian who reported a hate crime, sent the police department on a wild goose chase and got off easy after evidence emerged he staged that crime himself.
“This is a whitewash of justice,” Emanuel said, as if cover-ups aren’t common practice in City Hall. Remember, his administration spent $5 million in taxpayer cash to keep video of Laquan McDonald’s murder secret long enough to get him re-elected.
Democrat Bakari Sellers, the former South Carolina congressman, took to Twitter to call out Rahm’s Razzie-worthy acting job, too.
“Can y’all imagine if @chicagosmayor was as mad over Laquan McDonald as he is over Jussie Smollett?” Sellers wrote.
One day of fake outrage wasn’t enough for Rahm.
The mayor aimed a second-round of vitriol at Smollett, grabbing headlines with a threat to take civil legal action aimed at getting the “Empire” actor to reimburse the city $130,000 for the cost of investigating the alleged hate crime in the heart of Chicago tourist country.
Emanuel argued that getting Smollett to pay the city would equal an admission of “guilt,” which is a completely insane argument. And nobody knows that better than Rahm
His law department followed a longstanding City Hall tradition of settling police brutality lawsuits using non-disclosure agreements to keep a lid on damning evidence — like the video of Laquan McDonald’s murder — and included clauses that specifically state settlement payouts are not admissions of guilt.
So, when you see Emanuel on national news shows, and hear about him telling President Trump — who tweeted the “FBI & DOJ” would investigate the Smollett case — to “sit this one out” you’re witnessing a con-job meant to make Rahm look like Chicago’s champion.
Don’t buy it, America.
Chicago’s mayor is a big phony.
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Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting and Emmy-nominated producer, was a producer, writer and narrator for the Chicagoland series on CNN, and a consulting producer on the forthcoming Showtime documentary “Blue Wall” about the murder of Laquan McDonald, who Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke shot 16 times until the black teenager was dead.