Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker speaks to the media onboard a water taxi on the Chicago River in Chicago, Illinois, on Monday. (Scott Olson / Getty Images)
By Joe Saunders August 26, 2025 at 7:22am
It’s not easy to make Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker look small, but Donald Trump did it on Monday without even trying.
In fact, Pritzker did it to himself.
Pritzker, the rotund, Democratic leader of the Land of Lincoln, was mugging for the cameras in Chicago’s downtown, responding to Trump’s suggestion that the city might be the second after Washington, D.C., to see federal assistance fighting an out-of-control crime problem.
But one camera at least captured much more than Pritzker could have intended, and Eric Daugherty, of the conservative Florida’s Voice website, sent the scene to the world on the social media platform X.
JUST IN: This camera man is going viral for filming Illinois Governor JB Pritzker declare, “I live rent free in the president’s head!” and then panning DIRECTLY NEXT to where Pritzker is standing – TRUMP Tower.
The FUNNIEST SHT I’ve seen all month
“I live rent free in the… pic.twitter.com/ajLIyfb4FQ
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) August 25, 2025
“I know that I live rent-free in the president’s head,” Pritzker told reporters. “And I wish he would spend some time in Chicago, so that he could see what a lovely city we have.”
The camera then panned upward to capture the giant “Trump” sign emblazoned on Chicago’s Trump International Hotel and Tower.
Who would be a bigger disaster for Dems in 2028 – J.B. Pritzker or Kamala Harris?
As an image of Trump’s current dominance over the country’s Democrats, it was difficult to beat.
Pritzker’s statement came after Trump on Monday suggested he might send federalized National Guard troops to Chicago to strengthen law enforcement in a city Trump called a “killing field,” according to Politico.
Pritzker could have staged his dog and pony show anywhere in Chicago’s more than 200 square miles. Maybe a trash-strewn corner on the South or West sides, homes to the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods, would have set a better stage to brag about how safe Chicago is.
But instead he chose the glittery downtown area in the shadow, almost literally, of a Trump Organization property and a huge “TRUMP” sign that dwarfed even Pritzker’s considerable girth.
The irony was ummistakeable, and social media users knew it.
This might be the best clip of the year.
Talk about summing it up without words.
— Rob Volatile (@RobVolatile) August 25, 2025
You can’t claim rent free when you’re literally framed by Trump’s building. Live action self-own.
— The Undercurrent (@NotTheirScript) August 25, 2025
The greatest 15 seconds on the internet right now
— Cash Loren (@CashLorenShow) August 25, 2025
As foolish as Pritzker’s stunt made himself and his party look, there’s a serious side to all this.
Pritzker, like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, is widely considered to be aiming for the presidency in 2028. And he clearly thinks that reflexive opposition to anything Trump does or says is the key to winning the Democratic Party’s nomination.
In the process, though, he’s denying the reality his own state’s residents deal with daily — and Chicago’s crime, like the crime in the nation’s capital, is an unacceptable reality.
Even the city’s previous hapless Mayor Lorri Lightfoot recognized it during the first Trump administration when the Justice Department deployed hundreds of federal agents to the Windy City.
Operation Legend, as the deployment was dubbed, cut the city’s murder rate in half, then-Attorney General Bill Barr said, according to a 2021 report from WLS-TV in Chicago.
That deployment ended when now-former President Joe Biden took office in 2021, naturally. (Fighting crime was not exactly a priority of the corruption-ridden Biden administration.)
But for Democrats, the political priority of opposing Trump dominates every decision, even at the price of condemning innocent residents and visitors to Democrat-dominated cities to the tender mercies of street criminals, gang bangers, and illegal aliens.
Pritzker’s news conference, in one of the safest parts of the city, proved that.
He might be physically a large man — or even a very large man — but on the political scale Monday, he looked Lilliputian.
And he did it to himself.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn’t need a printing press to do it.
Birthplace
Philadelphia
Nationality
American
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