Beware America: Rahm's Long Con Could Get Him Back To White House

CHICAGO — Super Tuesday created a terrifying scenario that could lead to America’s most stubborn political cockroach re-infesting the White House. Rahm Emanuel, that is.

Emanuel, who fled City Hall before Chicago voters could exterminate his political career, told City Hall press corps dean Bill Cameron that he’s planning a political comeback.

“I’m not done with politics and politics isn’t done with me,” Emanuel said on Connected to Chicago, which airs on WLS AM 890 on Friday. “How that happens, I don’t know.”

Well, I do. It starts with spreading bald-faced lies, arguably Emanuel’s greatest strength.

Rahm even said as much on Cameron’s show, masking his intention to craft a revisionist history of his failures by telling a “joke.”

The failed former mayor explained why he’s not worried about being remembered as an abysmal failure who covered up video of a black teenager’s murder long enough to get re-elected, among other shady dealings, by comparing himself to Winston Churchill who said in 1944 that history would receive him very well because he planned on writing it.

“So, I plan on writing it,” Emanuel said of his own mythology.

The crafty politician now posing as a “journalist” and getting rich as an investment banker already has started the bogus re-telling of history by inventing a new book genre: Mayoral non-non-fiction. He’s currently on tour pimping a book that should be titled, “Rahm: A Megalomaniac’s Revisionist History Of Himself And The Importance Of American Mayors.”

What’s terrifying is that people outside Chicago might be buying Rahm’s B.S. and — if former Vice President Joe Biden somehow wins the Democratic nomination and beats President Trump in November — the smug little know-it-all who conned two U.S. presidents into believing he’s a brilliant political tactician with an omniscient worldview will do it again.

Rahm’s book tour is just part of a long con on the American people.

You can hear the deception in his voice when he tries to sell Cameron on the idea that he didn’t seek a third mayoral term because he was “tired.”

Emanuel throws out a non sequitur: “Second is, one of the things I’m proud of, I spent 25 years in politics. I think you’d agree I’m not a wallflower. But I never hired a lawyer. If you know something about history about third terms, they’re not exactly pretty. So, I decided, I’m going to take some time. I’m going to rest, think about where we are as a country.”

Sure, that’s exactly why Rahm quit.

It’s also just a coincidence that Emanuel’s book tour rolled right into Super Tuesday — where there was always a chance that either one of his buddies, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg or Biden, could emerge as contenders for the Democratic nomination — just in time for Rahm to casually announce he’s interested in his own political comeback.

Cameron asked Emanuel, “If a Democrat becomes president would you want to be in that administration?”

“That would be for him or her to decide,” Emanuel said, unable to stop himself from ruling out a job offer he would never get anyway.

“Given my views I don’t think Bernie Sanders, if he makes it there, I’m on the short list for anything,” Emanuel said, giggling like a schoolyard bully.

Chicagoans know there’s nothing funny about the prospect that a Democratic primary shaping up as a showdown between Biden and Sanders creates a 50-50 possibility that Emanuel is just an election away from influencing a third U.S. president.

So, in advance of Illinois’ March 17 election, I sent Biden’s campaign an email asking if the former vice president would make a campaign promise to never hire Chicago’s “murder mayor,” the co-architect of the “three strikes” crime bill that led to the mass incarceration of African Americans and the guy who, in 1996, advised former President Clinton to "claim and achieve record deportations of criminal aliens.”

I never heard back. America should be terrified.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting and Emmy-nominated producer, was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN. He was a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots."

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