‘People way too permissive’: Rahm Emanuel explains Chicago mayor’s low approval rating

Bill Maher picked Rahm Emanuel’s brain regarding why the current mayor of Chicago has such an abysmal approval rating.

“I read that the current mayor of Chicago has an approval rating of 6.6%. What’s going on in Chicago?” Maher asked the former Ambassador to Japan.

Watch:

Bill Maher asks Rahm Emanuel why Chicago’s mayor has such a low approval rating, and the panel agrees that Democrat policies have ruined large American cities:
Bill Maher: “I read that the current mayor of Chicago has an approval rating of 6.6%. What’s going on in Chicago?”
Rahm… pic.twitter.com/Wn3rj5kQ9v

— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) March 1, 2025

“We’ve gone through 5 years where people became way too permissive as a culture. Which is why everything is locked up at Walgreens and CVS, that’s a disaster. I don’t want to hear another word about the locker room, I don’t want to hear another word about the bathroom. You better start focusing on the classroom,” Emanuel said to applause. ” We had the worst reading scores for 8th graders in 30 years. And nobody, not a governor, not a mayor, not a president, not a secretary of education is talking about it. In 7th grade, if I had known I could have said ‘they’ and got in the girls bathroom, I would have done it.”

“We’re facing off with a superpower, China, and two-thirds of our children can’t read at an 8th-grade level,” he added.

Fareed Zakaria, who was also visiting Maher’s panel, expressed agreement.

“This is a huge Democrat Party problem. If you look at Democratic cities, they are terribly run. They have incredibly high taxes, it is impossible to build, so the cost of housing is crazy in places like New York and Chicago. The budget of New York state is twice that of Florida. Lots of taxes, lots of regulation, but nothing gets done,” he said. “Democrats have to own this: The answer to everything is not more taxes, more regulations. People are fed up with it, and feel that it isn’t working.”

DONATE TO BIZPAC REVIEW

Please help us! If you are fed up with letting radical big tech execs, phony fact-checkers, tyrannical liberals and a lying mainstream media have unprecedented power over your news please consider making a donation to BPR to help us fight them. Now is the time. Truth has never been more critical!