Regarding the Tribune Editorial Board’s recent attempt (“New York Mayor Mamdani was wrong to target Griffin,” April 26) to connect the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner to New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s tax proposal, the board seems to have a blind spot for how public figures operate and how they can be discussed in the public square.
Ken Griffin has gone out of his way to tell us how much he paid/contributed to Chicago while he was here. He is no stranger to telling us how much money he has and complaining about how much money he pays in taxes. He cannot put out this information for public consumption to make his point, then have the Tribune Editorial Board get mad on his behalf when someone uses that same information to make his or her own.
I am curious where the Tribune Editorial Board’s outrage is with U.S. Rep. Chip Roy’s legislation, known as the MAMDANI Act? That bill would denaturalize U.S. citizens who have socialist, communist or other Marxist-aligned thoughts, which is a clear attack on the First Amendment’s freedom of thought, not unlike the dinner, which was an attempt to attack and intimidate the freedom of the press. This seems like a stronger parallel to make than whatever the editorial board tried to do.
— Kelly Hayes, Chicago
The safer life of a billionaire
I’m still puzzled by the recent editorial linking the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner with Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s push for a pied-à-terre tax in New York City. Can readers expect a follow-up clarifying what that connection might be?
Incidentally, one doesn’t have to believe in “social murder” to suppose that a duly elected official such as Mamdani might use a high-rise building that contains one of many homes owned by a billionaire as a backdrop to publicize a mild new tax. The building is on a public street.
The Tribune Editorial Board repeats the line of Griffin’s lieutenant that this stunt could “torpedo” thousands of jobs to be created by a proposed Citadel redevelopment project.
Isn’t Griffin, not Mamdani, the one with his finger on the red button here? If Griffin is as beneficent as the board takes him to be, why would he threaten to abandon this project so capriciously? Does he really expect us to sympathize with him? Does the board?
The truth is that anyone in Griffin’s bracket — the president and Gov. JB Pritzker included — lives an infinitely safer life than the rest of us. It’s amazing what even $1 billion will do for one’s health, physical safety and peace of mind. The copays are a peach!
It’s unreasonable for billionaires to expect that no one should be allowed to know where they live (some of the time). But it’s understandable that they don’t want to be shot dead in the street.
Since the editorial board has drawn such needed attention to “the dangers faced by prominent wealthy individuals” these days, I have an idea that should ensure Griffin’s safety and gratify his philanthropic interests at the same time.
He should get rid of almost all his money. He could leave himself $999 million — about one-fiftieth of his net worth — and rejoin the salt of the earth. One advantage of this plan is that Mamdani could not tax him so much.
And if Griffin really wants to be safe on the street, he could use some of the money to build a special monument, with innovative architectural features and maybe a reflecting pool. It would be dedicated to the heroic patience with which Americans have tolerated billionaires like him for so very long.
Some will say this is a more extreme idea than just putting up with the pied-à-terre tax. Safety first, though, for our wounded wealthy.
— Andrew Holter, Chicago
Faith leaders’ leftist ideology
As a longtime lapsed Catholic struggling to regain my faith later in life, I sadly confess that I find it an increasingly difficult task with the likes of radical priest Michael Pfleger and fellow clerics putting their 1960s-bred leftist ideology on full display in columns such as Sunday’s “With God on our side, we must fight against this administration’s unholy warfare.”
It is one thing to criticize the current administration’s foreign and domestic policy; it is quite another to claim that God is on one side of the U.S. political spectrum while demonizing another.
To accuse the White House of engaging in “a white Christian crusade” with an “unabashed threat of genocide” for its morally justified effort to rid the world of an unhinged Iranian regime that denies the first Holocaust while promising the second may play well with Pfleger’s leftist friends as they retreat to their tax-free citadels to sip their wine and drink their tea.
But it is hardly a way to win over converts to Catholicism or, indeed, even Christianity, much less to encourage or to inspire those of us who first began drifting away from the church in the ’70s because of the increasing political activism of leftist priests. (The charge of “opportunism, nepotism and sexual exploitation” plays particularly poorly given the Catholic church’s own poor record in these areas this past half century.)
Yes, as Pfleger and his co-writers observe, the devil can quote Scripture for his own purpose. So perhaps they should take to their own hearts Pope Leo XIV’s recent admonition, “Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own … gain” rather than to invoke aging folk singer Bob Dylan’s “with God on our side, we won’t fight the next war.”
Sadly, the nation witnessed once again Saturday evening at what should have been the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner what happens when unhinged heated rhetoric stirs up hatred for one’s political opponents.
Perhaps Pfleger would be well advised to stick to his faith and his flock and to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, rather than to continue to pontificate from the pulpit — or even the paper.
— David Applegate, Huntley
Money raised for Trump library
In Sunday’s paper, Clarence Page writes that the Southern Poverty Law Center has been indicted on allegations that it engaged in a massive fraud operation to deceive donors, enrich the organization and hide its deception from the public (“Is the Southern Poverty Law Center indictment about fraud or something more sinister?”). Just last week, news organizations relayed information that a nonprofit fund that has raised money for Donald Trump’s future presidential library has faced scrutiny over its closing and the whereabouts of the more than $60 million that was raised.
Was the money returned to the donors?
There are laws that all citizens need to follow. No one is above the law. The American people deserve to know.
— George Nedic, Mundelein
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