Chicago had another bloody weekend. And then Mayor Brandon Johnson blamed it on President Richard Nixon, the 37th president of the U.S. This is what he said: “We had a chance 60 years ago to get at the root causes and people mocked President [Lyndon] Johnson and we ended up with Richard Nixon.”

Maybe the mayor forgot about Vietnam, the '68 Democrat convention and the sense of chaos in the country back then.

The Nixon Foundation punched back and I'm glad they did. This is their statement:

“Mayor Johnson’s reference to President Nixon is gratuitous and the facts are not on his side in his characterization of Richard Nixon and the Nixon administration’s civil rights record,” the organization said in a tweet, adding a long list of accomplishments it claims Nixon made in furtherance of civil rights.

“In 1971, the Nixon administration developed a plan to carry out the 1954 SCOTUS decision in Brown v. Board of Education to desegregate all schools in the South. In 1969, 64% of Southern Schools were segregated. By 1974, 8% were segregated. Done effectively and peacefully,” read one example.

“Nixon issued an executive order calling on federal government agencies to apply equal-opportunity policies to every aspect of federal personnel policies and practices,” the foundation continued. “Nixon allocated $12 million for research on sickle-cell anemia, a blood disorder that afflicts one out of every 500 black children, with the hope of decreasing that number.”

And there is a lot more. So let's give the mayor a little homework if he is interested in learning something.

First, let's give the mayor a copy of One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream by Tom Wicker. I read this book years ago and it taught me a lot about President Nixon and LBJ's Great Society. The mayor may discover that he is dead wrong.

Second, what does President Nixon, who left office 50 years ago and died 30 years ago, have to do with the collapse of Chicago? What ails the Windy City is one-party rule and especially the crazy left wing running that city.

Third, the breakdown of the black family is a problem. How else do you explain young men looting and attacking people? I don’t remember that happening when Nixon was president.

Last, but not least, Mayor Johnson has zero answers for anything. He is a failed leader and failures look for who to blame rather than accept responsibility.

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Image: U.S. Department of Agriculture