Rahm Tells Reporter 'Assumptions You Have About Me Are F---ing Wrong'

By Rachel Cromidas in News on Feb 23, 2016 2:46PM

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is still deflecting blame over the considerably botched (some would argue criminally botched) handling of the police shooting of Laquan McDonald and the chilling video evidence behind it. This time, he's speaking in a rare sit-down interview with The New Yorker, in the magazine's latest profile on Chicago's activist priest and outspoken police critic Rev. Michael Pfleger.

The profile by Evan Osnos delves into the subject of Emanuel's role in the McDonald case, which took over a year to come to light and over a year for charges to be brought against the Chicago police officer who shot McDonald 16 times, about 5,000 words in. It's classic Rahm—a broad denial and the F-bomb.

During our interview, I asked if he was conducting any internal polling about the crisis. He said no, adding, “Now you know that all the assumptions you have about me are fucking wrong.”

But as Osnos writes, it's hard to believe Emanuel truly did not know the details of the case while campaigning for reelection last winter and had not seen the video, which "contradicts police reports, suggesting an orchestrated coverup."

Many in Chicago found it hard to imagine that the mayor of a city with historic police problems, at a moment when law-enforcement conduct was a national political issue—a mayor who cultivated an image of attention to small details—would not have wanted more information.

Rahm responded, "I was reassured that four entities were crawling all over this thing: one, the state’s attorney; one, the U.S. attorney in the name of the Justice Department; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and IPRA"...“I don’t think I ever thought that it still would take until December, a year later,” for Cook County States Attorney Anita Alvarez's office to bring charges against the officer, Jason Van Dyke, who was charged with six counts of first-degree murder in December.

Pfleger told Osnos that Rahm has been more blunt with him about it:

“He told me to my face, ‘Mike, I did nothing illegal. I swear to God. Nothing, Mike.’ ‘It’s O.K., I believe that,’ I said.” Emanuel has maintained that he was following City Hall procedure by keeping the video a secret, but Pfleger considers that to be a failing. “I said, ‘You knew the process was fucked up, so you hid behind the process.’ ”

Osnos describes Pfleger as "torn" between wanting to work closely with the mayor on a solution and maintaining his image as a strong political critic in the wake of Chicago's police misconduct crises. And despite calls for Emanuel's resignation far and wide, Osnos interview with Emanuel shows the mayor is somehow not taking them personally:

He described the protests to me as part of a national trend. “I found out from my colleagues: The mayor of Minneapolis was booed off the stage; she didn’t finish her speech. The mayor of Denver couldn’t get his M.L.K. event off the ground.”

He didn’t think the protests reflected broad sentiment in Chicago. “I respect people’s passion and the desire to do this,” he said. “I know the difference between people who are protesting on the issue and people who are relitigating the 2011 and 2015 election. And I’m not the only person getting protests across the country.”

[H/T The Reader]