Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker was interviewed by civil rights activist Al Sharpton during the National Action Network Convention Thursday, where he reminded the audience that his opposition to President Donald Trump goes back to his first term.
“This is a national emergency,” Pritzker said, recalling the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, when Trump agreed to supply protective equipment in exchange for Pritzker’s praise. “People are dying, and the president is essentially extorting.”
“What they sent was nothing of what I asked for,” Pritzker added. “They sent me broken BiPAP machines, not ventilators. They sent me surgical masks, not N95 masks—there’s a big difference. So I went on those Sunday shows, and I didn’t say nice things about the president, as you can imagine.”
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Of course, as former Rep. Katie Porter of California later revealed, Trump chose to sell life-saving medical supplies—like N95 masks and ventilators—for a quick profit, while handing out inflated medical manufacturing contracts to dubious companies as Americans died.
Pritzker went on to address Trump’s ongoing anti-immigrant agenda, comparing his first term policies to his current mass deportations.
“It wasn’t just about deportation, although that’s what you heard when I stood up to him,” Pritzker said. “It was bad his first term, but you could see he was heading into his second term to really take away people’s rights.”
“Before people saw it in Minneapolis, they did it in Chicago. We had people shot and killed by [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and [Customs and Border Protection],” he added. “They were tackling black and brown people—U.S. citizens—and detaining people and taking them in. It wasn’t really about deportation; it wasn’t really about immigration. It’s this whole administration’s view about people of color.”
As Pritzker reminds us all, the disaster that is Trump’s second term is not a departure from his first—it’s an escalation.
via Daily Kos https://ift.tt/JSGFtlm
April 9, 2026 at 05:15PM
Illinois Delivered 