Mayor Lightfoot: Message To Trump 'Starts With F And Ends With U'

CHICAGO — Mayor Lori Lightfoot responded to President Trump's Thursday night tweet suggesting that he would order U.S. troops to shoot "thugs" in Minneapolis protesting the killing of George Floyd by a police officer with a thinly coded message: "It starts with F and ends with U."

In a tweet the social media platform marked with a warning for "glorifying violence," Trump wrote, "These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won't let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!"

On Friday, Lightfoot called the tweet, which was tagged by Twitter for glorifying violence, "profoundly dangerous."

"We see the game he's playing because it's so transparent, and he's not very good at it," Lightfoot said. "He wants to show failures on the part of Democratic local leaders … his goal is to polarize, to destabilize local government and to inflame racist urges. And we can absolutely not let him prevail. And I will code what I want to say [to Trump] and it starts with F and ends with U."

Floyd died Monday after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin held his knee to the handcuffed 46 year-old African-American man's neck. Chauvin was charged with third degree murder and manslaughter on Friday afternoon.

Floyd's killing sparked rioting in Minneapolis, where stores and a police station were burned over the last three days, and protests across the country, including in Chicago.

"I feel angry, I feel sickened and a range of other emotions all at once. Being Black in America should not be a death sentence," Lightfoot said. "We should not fear for the lives of our young ones, and mothers shouldn't fear when their young men and women go out into the world that they're going to get that fateful call."

Lightfoot demanded an apology from Trump. She didn't get one. Instead, the president tweeted what seemed to be a clarification: "Looting leads to shooting, and that's why a man was shot and killed in Minneapolis on Wednesday night — or look at what just happened in Louisville with 7 people shot. I don't want this to happen, and that's what the expression put out last night means...."

Chicago's mayor told reporters she's not worrying that her harsh comments will cause the city to suffer financial retaliation from the Trump administration.

“What I'm concerned about is a president of the United States using his bully pulpit to foment violence, that's what I'm concerned about. There's no other way that you can read that tweet than fomenting, encouraging violence against residents in a city or in cities across the country who are expressing themselves and exercising their First Amendment right. Nobody is going to sit and condone looting and violence. But to say, as the President of the United States, that you are encouraging people to be shot in the street, that's what I'm concerned about," Lightfoot said.

"And frankly, everyone should be concerned about that. That's not leadership. That's cowardice. That's playing to your base with the biggest dog whistle possible."

Lightfoot was asked why she didn't respond as former First Lady Michelle Obama once advised: "When they go low, we go high."

"I'm not Michelle Obama," the mayor said. "I don't take the bait every time, but this time, when we are suffering pain and trauma at the killing of a black man in the street, the fact that he would use this opportunity to try to, for political gain and to blow the dog whistle to his base, I'm a black woman and I'm a leader. And I feel an obligation to speak out when something as offensive as that is said by anyone, but particularly the president. And I make no apologies whatsoever ... I'm calling him out for what he said. It was wrong. It was offensive. And he should retract it and apologize."