Days after 19 Chicago police officers were hospitalized after defending a statue of Christopher Columbus in Grant Park, Democrat Mayor Lori Lightfoot made the unilateral decision to topple it herself in the middle of the night. The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

The Christopher Columbus statue in Grant Park was removed hours after Mayor Lori Lightfoot called for its removal.

Two cranes pulled their way up to the statue just before 2 a.m. Friday, after hours of vocal confrontations between protestors and supporters of the statue, including John Catanzara, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7.

[…]

Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) told the Chicago Sun-Times late Thursday that Lightfoot made “a unilateral decision” to take down the statues. Hopkins said the intention was to have them removed Thursday night.

“At this hour, there is discussion about postponing the removal, but the mayor has not indicated any reversal of her decision,” he said.

[…]

When the news broke, over a thousand protesters who were rallying near Lightfoot’s Logan Square home rejoiced. Soon after, an organizer led the crowd in a celebratory chant.

“Thank you for the statue, now defund CPD,” the crowd bellowed.

Gee, what do you think will happen after you incentivize the violence committed by the Black Lives Matter and Antifa terrorists who injured 49 Chicago police officers (19 of whom were hospitalized) with a victory like this?

Do you think rewarding terrorist behavior will result in more or less terrorism?

Since the very day all this violence broke out in Democrat-run cities, I have been warning that things will get a lot worse before they get better. That has not only proven to be true, it is still true… Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

As far as I’m concerned, Chicagoans are getting is exactly what they voted for: which was not a mayor interested in the health of her city, but a far-left extremist and activist, a mayor who deliberately fails the leadership test every time, a disgraceful mayor who’s in obvious sympathy with those tearing her city apart.

Lightfoot is not only encouraging domestic terrorism by rewarding terrorists for their behavior, this failure of leadership and her animus towards police have resulted in an explosion in violent crime in a city that was already so infamous for its violent crime it earned the nickname Chiraq.

The mayor’s appeasement of these terrorists by removing the Columbus statue is also a slap in the face of the very idea of racial reconciliation. No one ever wants to talk about this, but blacks are not the only group who have faced oppression in America.

For a long time, in the late 19th and early 20th century, Italians faced hideous discrimination and these statues of Columbus were put in place to heal that divide, to remind Americans that America was founded by an Italian, and to let Italian-Americans know most Americans knew that.

But now this hideous and hideously failed mayor has literally torn all that down, and we all know why… Democrats now oppose racial reconciliation. In fact, they now describe color blindness as an act of racism. Her act is a deliberate one, not only to encourage the terrorists, but to gin up even more racial hatred and division – because this is the only play Democrats have left now their ideas have been exposed, in countless cities, as failed.

Yes, by removing the Columbus statue, Lightfoot has done the terrorists’ job for them. She has also wiped away the sacrifices made by those police officers who risked their lives to protect that statue, and she has wiped away a vital symbol of e pluribus unum…

I don’t live in Chicago, and some 70 percent of Chicagoans voted for her. This is Chicago’s problem. Not mine.

As I always say, you get what you vote for, and right now, Chicago is getting exactly what it voted for.