Trump wants him arrested. JB Pritzker is breaking through

Over the next few weeks, FrameLab contributor Jason Sattler will examine how Democrats are communicating in this era of Trump fascism. Jason is LOLGOP on BlueSky and pretty much any other social media platform. His writing has appeared in USA TODAY, Wired.com, the New York Daily News and Alternet. Read his first installment here.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker should not work as a populist messenger. He’s worth billions, owns private jets, and comes from one of America's wealthiest families.

Sounds like someone else we know!

Like a mirror version of Trump, he also seems to at times possess a preternatural ability to summon the worldview of his party’s base. 

However: While Trump personifies Lakoff’s strict father model by rigorously reminding you of who the “daddy” is, the governor of Illinois often embodies the empathy of a Nurturant Parent who takes care of his people.

As Trump threatens Chicago—and threatens Pritzker with jail—the governor has stepped up his game. He’s employing two strategies likely informed by watching Newsom's response to the invasion of Los Angeles.

The press conference he gave in late August in front of a diverse array of Illinoisans rallied patriots in Illinois and across the nation. He displayed two strategies that others should adopt.

1. Pre-emptive framing. In immediate response to news that the Trump regime was planning to “ deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago,” Pritzker stepped out on a Monday afternoon to frame what the goal of the occupation was while presenting a visual argument of who is united against Trump in a serene, beautiful view of the city with big shoulders.

He didn’t begin by engaging the false pretexts for the invasion—immigration or law enforcement—instead, he laid out the stakes:  “This is precisely the type of overreach that our country's founders warned against, and it's the reason that they established a federal system. With a separation of powers built on checks and balances, what President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American.”

2. Breaking the fourth wall. Getting the mainstream press to tell the truth about Trump’s motivations and illiberal assault on our freedoms is almost impossible. 

We have a media that—even before Trump began his extortion racket that has crushed any integrity at CBS News—refuses to address the rot in the GOP. It couches nearly all of their reporting in the ethics of “both sides,” presenting politics as a “toss-up” between two fairly even competitors

Pritzker took that on directly:

 To the members of the press who are assembled here today, and listening across the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is. This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story.

This is not a time to fall back into the reflexive crouch that I so often see, where the authoritarian creep by this administration is ignored in favor of some horse-race piece on who will be helped politically by the president's action.

Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a US city, punish his dissidents, and score political points. If this were happening in any other country, we would've had no trouble calling it what it is—a dangerous power grab.

3. Mobilizing. This is a step that Pritzker took that goes well beyond what Newsom did and has proven effective not just in swaying public opinion but in making the legal case against Trump’s invasion of Chicago.
   
   The governor urged residents to “Get out your phones” and document any abuses by ICE or other federal officials. You can see why many politicians would be reluctant to do this because it could also backfire on them.
   
   Chicagoans have also documented alleged abuses by Illinois State Troopers as the state makes the case that its law enforcement can handle crime and crowd control without federal intervention.

What worked?

Pritzker led the news and forced the media to frame the assault on Chicago as an assault on the Constitution. The press conference garnered national news coverage and has lingered in all subsequent reporting on Trump’s continued escalations against the Second City.

He also yielded a response from Trump, who homed in on Pritzker’s use of the word “dictator,” by suggesting that some people want that. The president, who despises the checks of democracy, seems happy to help spread that frame.

Media friendly to democracy embraced the call to see the truth in Trump’s authoritarian ambitions. However, Fox (along with much of the mainstream media) instead focused on Trump’s pretext of fighting crime. 

They highlight Chicago’s murder rate without acknowledging what Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, keeps pointing out: the city doesn’t have an immigration problem; it has a gun problem that Trump has only made worse with his cuts, especially to the ATF.

Pritzker continues to appeal directly to the people of his state and on behalf of his state by distributing “know your rights” guidance to residents via social media.

It didn’t stop the invasion, but it has helped push Trump’s approval rating lower and lower, nearly mirroring his declining support in 2017 despite beginning his term far more popular than he’s ever been as a politician.

What’s next?

Pritzker could escalate his effort to get the media to tell the truth about Trump’s takeover of American democracy, exemplified by the attack on cities. But he has to recognize that the media that is most likely to “both sides” the issue won’t ever help him break through their veneer of balance. 

The form of his call for truth must match his “This is not normal” message, which he should probably update, as it employs negation to reinforce the “normal” frame, similar to Nixon's protest that he was “not a crook.” 

He has, and needs to continue to, utilize every available medium—short-form video, long-form video podcasts, sports radio, late-night TV, whatever—to tell it “like it is” and demand that others do the same.

 Which leaders inspire you and give you hope? Let us know in the comments.