New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned Joe Biden on Monday not to add former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to his possible administration because of Emanuel’s actions over the Laquan McDonald shooting.
On Monday, WTTW reporter Heather Cherone tweeted a snippet of an interview revealing that AOC is concerned over the picks that Joe Biden seemed poised to make to fill his possible administration. One of those was Emanuel, who AOC reportedly said “should not play a role in the party’s future.”
AOC also responded to Cherone’s tweet by further narrowing down why Emanuel was unacceptable to her. AOC tweeted, “We must govern with integrity and accountability. Laquan McDonald’s life mattered.”
Of course, that was a reference to the police-involved shooting of Chicago teenager Laquan McDonald, who was shot 16 times after confronting police in October of 2014.
Many criticized Mayor Emanuel for keeping a lid on the shooting while he ran for re-election. Indeed, Emanuel resisted speaking much about the McDonald shooting until after his 2015 re-election to his second term in City Hall.
In November of 2015, months after Emanuel’s re-election, a court order released the McDonald shooting police dashcam video. The city soon erupted in protests over the shooting, prompting Mayor Emanuel to create the “Chicago Police Accountability Task Force” in December. Emanuel then immediately fired Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy. Still, despite calls for his resignation, Emanuel served his full term before announcing that he would not run for a third term in 2019.
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