(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Chicago Democrat Mayor Lori Lightfoot responded to drag racers terrorizing her city—with one reportedly killing a 40-year-old woman—by blaming social media for their behavior.
The same weekend, “an angry crowd attacked police with bricks, a road sign, a tree and rocks as a police vehicle drove toward the crowd,” The Daily Wire reported.
Lightfoot, who has done nothing to stymie the skyrocketing crime in Chicago, blamed social media’s influence on young people for the drag racing.
“What roles do the TikToks and the Instagrams that are posting all these videos do?” a reporter asked. “These [drag races] are clear violations of the law…. It’s diminished, right? Should the police department be working with them to try to take these things down?”
“You’re trying to trigger me, aren’t you?” Lightfoot responded, adding, “I’m being somewhat facetious.”
She then launched into a tirade against social media companies.
“I think the lack of responsibility on the part of social media companies, who absolutely know exactly the kind of things that are being posted, their failure to be proactive in addressing these issues to work proactively with law enforcement is an absolute abomination,” Lightfoot said, not commenting on her lack of support for Chicago’s police officers and the rising crime in her city.
Continuing, she called for the federal government to intervene and effectively censor the content.
“I’m one who believes that the federal government has to step up and regulate every single one of these platforms, whether it’s selling guns on social media, brazenly and openly, and nothing’s being done about it,” she said.
“Whether it’s this kind of thing, advertising things that clearly threaten public safety, whether it’s violence against women, whether it’s child pornography, there is a whole marketplace of illegal activity that is going on every single day on social media.”
She then said that social media censorship has not been stringent enough, saying that the First Amendment is coming up against public safety.
Lightfoot also called out the social media companies for “not own[ing] their responsibility.”
