Chicago Mayor Lightfoot doesn't like this white Newsmax reporter

Chicago, IL (July 28, 2021) - Once again, Mayor Lightfoot has doubled down on her racist remarks from earlier this year that she would only grant interviews to journalists of color. She made the remarks on the New York Times' podcast Sway on Monday:

"Here is the bottom line for me: To state the obvious, I’m a black woman mayor," she said. "I’m the mayor of the third-largest city in the country. Obviously, I have a platform, and it’s important to me to advocate on things that I believe are important. Going back to why I ran — to disrupt the status quo. The media is critically important to our democracy. … The media is in a time of incredible upheaval and disruption, but our City Hall press corps looks like it’s 1950 or 1970."

But Newsmax correspondent, William J. Kelly, a white reporter based in Chicago, who has earned Lightfoot's ire recently by asking her tough questions about Chicago's crime rate at her at her press conferences, said that Lightfoot's remarks are not only racist but misleading.

"It's pathetic that Mayor Lightfoot is using race to deflect criticism of her administration on key issues like Chicago's out-of-control violent crime and murder rate," Kelly said. "As a reporter, I represent the people of Chicago - every race, color and creed. And my race should have nothing to do with Mayor Lightfoot being accountable to the people - and that's why I will keep asking her the tough questions she deserves to be asked."

At her press conference in June, Kelly asked Mayor Lightfoot if she had lost control of the city. She angrily dismissed his comments and said that crime was down. The video of the heated encounter has since received more than 1.5 million views and more than 35,000 comments - most of them critical of Mayor Lightfoot. Kelly's second video with Mayor Lightfoot also went viral when she denied that the George Floyd riots had anything to do with race. The video has also received more than 734K views and 19,000 comments.

If Mayor Lightfoot prevents William Kelly from asking her questions, our legal defense fund is prepared to file a lawsuit. To support our legal defense fund, which is currently suing Gov. Pritzker on behalf of high school students across Illinois, please donate here to our GoFundMe campaign