J.B. Pritzker, the hefty Illinois governor with a waistline that makes Chris Christie look smelt, has tossed out feelers about running for president. Mark Vazquez, the editor of the Illinois Review, joins me to discuss why.
00:00:08.760Joining me now is Mark Vargas, who is not only the editor of the Illinois Review, but has his own record of public service, serving as a civilian in a number of foreign assignments to work for his country.
00:00:24.440I want to ask you, before we get into the real topic I invited you to talk about, J.B. Pritzker, the hefty Illinois governor with a waistline that makes Chris Christie look smelt.
00:00:37.260I want to ask you for a moment about the rise of Zoran Mamdami, who was recently exposed as a race hustler who actually misappropriated his racial identity in a pathetic attempt to exploit the DEI affirmative action regime
00:00:54.700According to recent data that was obtained by a hacker from Columbia University, it was revealed that Mamdami claimed to be a black man when he applied to Columbia in 2009,
00:01:05.820even though he lied about his race and listed his father, who was a professor at the very same university on his application.
00:01:14.500He still couldn't get in because his grades were so poor.
00:01:18.240What do you make of the rise of this Muslim radical socialist, if not communist, as a Democrat nominee for mayor of New York City?
00:01:28.840Well, Roger, lying about key information sounds like his political advisor is Letitia James.
00:01:34.160But I think Mamdami is great for Republicans, great for the MAGA movement, and he represents the worst nightmare for mainstream Democrats because of how extreme he is.
00:01:45.040Not only is he all for DEI, but he's anti-American.
00:01:50.460He's, again, he's the worst nightmare for Democrats.
00:01:53.960He's threatened to arrest Prime Minister, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he arrives in New York City for the U.N. meeting.
00:02:01.920But the more attention that Mamdami gets, I think the better off it is in terms of poll numbers and support, support for Republicans and for MAGA and for President Trump,
00:02:11.860because he is so extreme and it's just yet another example of how far to the left the Democratic Party has gone.
00:02:49.500Those who think Curtis Sliwa, who worked very hard to win the Republican nomination, is going to get out of the race are dreaming.
00:02:57.200I'm not sure what former Governor Andrew Cuomo will do.
00:03:01.780The governor is looking a little long in the tooth to me, and he was dispatched relatively easily in the Democrat primary.
00:03:08.340But whether it is a four-person race or whether it is a two-person race, being the Democrat nominee for mayor of New York City puts you in the poll position.
00:03:20.160While it could be very, very hard on the people of New York when he defunds the police, when he opens the prisons,
00:03:27.960when he taxes the middle class and anybody who has any money to pay for all of his government giveaway projects,
00:03:35.920I predict to you that New York will be on fire by 2028 and will sadly be a showcase for the rest of the nation
00:03:43.940as to what happens when you select Democrats who share a Marxist, hateful, pro-Islamic, pro-Muslim, pro-Hamas leader.
00:04:02.080J.B. Pritzker, who I referred to earlier as the rotund Illinois governor,
00:04:08.360who with a waistline that makes Chris Christie look smelt, has tossed out feelers about running for president.
00:04:16.060I find this almost shocking in view of his record in Illinois.
00:04:20.700Can you speak to us about that record and also give us some insights into how he appears to be faring in the early polling?
00:04:32.600Well, Pritzker's entire tenure, first of all, Roger, the only reason why he's governor is because he bought the seat not once but twice.
00:04:40.520He's heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune, so he was born with a net worth of $4.5 billion.
00:04:48.520So he spent over nearly $400 million of his own money to be elected governor.
00:04:54.040So the guy has no friends. He only pays for them.
00:04:57.200But his entire tenure as governor of Illinois has been about tax and spend.
00:05:02.660He's raised taxes on everyday hardworking Illinoisans.
00:05:06.460And it's projected that over the next five years, Illinois is going to have a $22 billion budget deficit.
00:05:14.500And his far-left progressive views, he'd certainly be aligned with the Mondami in New York City, given his progressive views for transgenderism, his hatred for Republicans and the MAGA movement.
00:06:09.100Well, that's demagoguery at its worst.
00:06:35.020How is he looking in these early polls, Mark?
00:06:37.560Well, Emerson put out a poll of potential 12 Democrat candidates for a Democratic primary, and of the 12, Pritzker is dead last.
00:06:48.760He's polling at just 2%, but surprisingly, Roger, among the black community nationally, he's only got 1%, and of the Hispanic community, he's only at 0%.
00:07:00.820And so it shows how wildly unpopular, and so it shows how wildly unpopular J.B. Pritzker is at the national level, but I can tell you, he's also wildly unpopular at the local level here in Illinois.
00:07:11.400Yeah, it really is extraordinary, Illinois has had an incredible spike in crime, now we're to the point where the rise in crime is not just in the city of Chicago proper, but unfortunately, spreading to the wealthier suburbs.
00:07:28.600But the mayor of Chicago, Mayor Johnson, he actually says that the rise in crime is all Richard Nixon's fault. Listen to this.
00:07:39.920So we cut off the pipeline. Boys between the ages of 10 and 19 being either victims or the perpetrators. So, yeah, it is personal.
00:07:51.540Black death has been unfortunately accepted in this country for a very long time. We had a chance 60 years ago to get at the root causes, and people mocked President Johnson. And we ended up with Richard Nixon.
00:08:15.520I'm going to work hard every day to transform this city. That's what it takes to build a better, stronger state for Chicago and everybody to step up.
00:08:21.540Now, let's be very clear about this. It was President Richard Nixon who desegregated the American schools. It was President Richard Nixon who appointed more African Americans to federal office than Lyndon Baines Johnson and John F. Kennedy combined.
00:08:36.540It was Richard Nixon who gave us the American schools. It was Richard Nixon who gave us the policy of affirmative action. It was Richard Nixon who desegregated the trade unions.
00:08:46.660It was Richard Nixon who insisted you could not bid on a federal contract if your company was segregated. It was Richard Nixon who increased ninefold the funding for black colleges.
00:09:03.700It was Richard Nixon. It was Richard Nixon. It is Richard Nixon who, in 1958, rounded up the votes to pass the Civil Rights Bill, the first Civil Rights Bill passed since the Civil War, when Lyndon Johnson, who the mayor just relied upon, was rounding up the votes to defeat it.
00:09:19.320I actually think that the mayor, I'm not sure if he's mentally ill. I know he's physically ill. Talk about a guy who is not up to the job. Mark, you told me a harrowing story the other night. You were in bed when you heard gunshots. What happened?
00:09:36.240I was woken about 11 p.m. to the sound of, I thought were fireworks, but it turned out they were over 15 gunshots that led to a mass shooting. 18 people were shot. Four were killed just a couple of blocks from where I was staying. It was unbelievable.
00:09:57.440And again, this has been encouraged by the leadership of Governor Pritzker and Brandon Johnson. You cannot ask the mayor, who, by the way, Roger, his approval rating is at 4%, the lowest approval rating, I think, of any mayor in history.
00:10:09.820Because let's be clear, he was only elected because of the very corrupt and racist Chicago's Teachers Union, who literally stole the election for him. But he's been hospitalized over 10 times for panic attacks.
00:10:21.900But they call rioting and looting and burning police cars and flipping them upside down as nearly just peaceful protesting and that the youth, they need more activities to do after school and during the summertime.
00:10:35.680If they had more activities to do, then they would be peacefully protesting and tormenting residents and visitors to Chicago. But he is ill-prepared. Anytime you ask him a difficult question about crime, he responds with, you're only asking me this question because I am a man of color.
00:10:51.220No, they're asking you these tough questions about crime and how to reduce crime because you're the mayor of this city.
00:10:57.800Folks, if you're just tuning in, we're talking to Mark Vargas, who is the editor of the Illinois Review and is a keen analyst of both state and national politics.
00:11:10.460Mark, Pope Leo, the new pope, is a Chicago native. Thus far, he has released some statements that seem like a breath of fresh air.
00:11:19.680Well, a couple other things he says show that he's not incredibly different than his predecessor, the late Argentine Marxist sympathizer, Pope Francis.
00:11:30.940What's your take on Pope Leo and the direction he's going to take the church?
00:11:36.000Well, it's certainly interesting to have a pope who grew up in a county just next to yours where you grew up.
00:11:40.580He's still a registered voter in Will County in the western suburbs of Chicago.
00:11:45.180Just last summer, he was at one of the famous Chicago pizza joints with his family.
00:11:50.300He's an unabashed Chicago White Sox fan, and I am as well.
00:11:54.000His brother, Louis, who's here in Florida, is a huge Trump supporter.
00:11:58.060But certainly a breath of fresh air, he's got a lot of challenges ahead.
00:12:02.880Number one is the child sex abuse among the church, and he's claimed to have a zero tolerance of that, so he needs to be held accountable.
00:12:11.080Let's make sure that there is a zero tolerance for that.
00:12:13.260But no doubt we had a progressive, liberal Pope Francis, but I think that Pope Leo has shown, you know, he's pushing back against the Trump administration in terms of immigration of illegals.
00:12:28.160But they seem to forget that the Vatican is surrounded by walls.
00:12:32.520Walls are used for protection, and that's why President Trump has been so keen on building a wall on our southern border for protection.
00:12:39.140We're a nation of laws, and we need to apply those laws.
00:12:43.120But, you know, he has some progressive views, but he's, you know, everything that I've seen is he's going to probably try and go right down the middle.
00:12:52.920But there's no doubt that he's got challenges, whether it's child sex abuse challenges, whether it's financial challenges.
00:12:59.940But we do know that he's been very critical of President Trump on migration.