September 21, 2025 | By John Kass

Is anyone talking about the leadership qualities of Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker?

No. Of course not. He is a liar who has run his failed state into the ground, damaging all who can’t escape and still live there.

Pritzker has inherited billions of dollars from his family’s hotel empire, allowing him to indulge every whim while eating a multitude of sins. He has spent an estimated $350 million on electing himself to the governor’s office. And now he wants to buy himself the presidency.

Ask yourself: Why don’t people talk of him as a leader? You never hear anyone talking about him in such positive terms. Why not?

There are many liars in politics on both sides of the political divide. I know this, having spent 40 years covering corrupt politics in the Combine State for the now-ethically bankrupt Chicago Tribune. But Pritzker is more than a simple liar.

He is a coward. His break with reality came after the assassination of the charismatic conservative youth organizer Charlie Kirk.

Kirk was murdered by a leftist pro-trans sniper who was appealing to his transgender lover, a man pretending to be a woman.  And the Democrats, leftist legacy media and others who demonized Charlie after his death and kept dreaming up scenarios that blamed Kirk for his own murder and held themselves absolutely blameless.

Yes all that is corrupt, twisted and evil. But as funeral services were scheduled to be held on Sunday, understand who killed Charlie Kirk.

Yet only hours after Kirk had been assassinated, Pritzker was making unctuous sounds from the back of his throat, loudly telling Americans that he never, ever called Republicans Nazis and fascists.

“No, I have not,” Pritzker said at a news conference where reporters called him out on a multitude of his past hateful statements about Republicans. “That is completely false. I have never called Republicans Nazis. That’s what [Republicans] would like to say, they’re lying. They’re lying,” Pritzker said. “Well, that’s not what I called them.”

Is that the honest-to-goodness truth fat boy? That you never said such a thing?

I don’t think so. Neither do the people of Illinois. It’s all on tape. You’ve said it again and again.

The broken Illinois Republican Party has never recovered from former Gov. Bruce Rauner signing legislation supporting Illinois as a sanctuary state for illegal migrants and another bill using taxpayer funds for abortions. Then Pritzker literally bought the governor’s post for himself and along the way purchased Republican and Democrat legislators. He unleashed his billions to suppress what were, for him, objectionable realities.

JB Pritzker: I never called them Nazis

Also JB Pritzker: OK, so maybe I called Trump Hitler and Republicans nazis on a dozen occasions…pic.twitter.com/28MLpXvaec

— Kevin Dalton (@TheKevinDalton) September 15, 2025

Illinois Republicans argue that Pritzker has escalated divisions between the state’s residents, with State Rep. Adam Niemerg filing articles of impeachment against Pritzker because of what he called “hateful rhetoric.”

Niemerg said the governor needs to be held accountable for his recent remarks about Republicans, arguing that Pritzker has compared them to Nazis and fascists.

The left has been busy spinning various ridiculous narratives to shield themselves from the fact that the shooter was part of the Democrat Assassination Culture.

Their constant shrieking and portraying Republicans as fascists put targets on Republican backs. Remember that a demented leftist tried to massacre Republicans who were playing baseball in a park. Another tried to murder an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. And leftists tried to twice assassinate President Donald Trump.  They dehumanize Republicans in the pages of their left wing newspapers, on their TV news networks, most notably MSNBC and CNN and have the audacity to ask, publicly, why Americans are hopelessly divided? Is there any wonder, with all the partisan hate and dehumanizing of conservatives that violence explodes?

Let’s review leftist violence: There were the Ferguson Riots of  2014 when a large young thug named Michael Brown, a black man, attempted a strong-armed robbery of a neighborhood store, grabbed for a police officer’s gun and was fatally shot. NFL players acting as agents of the Democratic left perpetuated the “hands up don’t shoot lie” for political leverage and intimidation. ANTIFA and Black Lives Matter overwhelmed American cities with riots, dozens of people killed, billions of dollars were lost in damage. Some cities, like Chicago, have never recovered.

Remember leftists attacking those Covington High School kids, screaming at them, the media promoting it, lauding it. And the line from the Black Lives Matter riots that sealed the demise of American journalism, as corporate journos intimidated by black left wing activists prattled on about those “fiery but peaceful protests” as the cities burned.

The elevation of leftist heartthrob and assassin Luigi Mangione–facing the death penalty for the murder of a health care executive-of the brown eyes being treated as a sex object as the left builds an opera around him. And that ridiculous fool of an ABC reporter Matt Guttman prattling on about the touching love exhibited by the pro-transgender assassin of  Charlie Kirk.

The corporate media wants their “Che” Guevara, as Pritzker–the quivering mass of leftist goo–calls for angry protests in the streets.

After Kirk was murdered by the political left did white Republicans riot and burn cities and kill cops? Did white conservatives kneel and take the media spotlight wearing costumes–as did Nancy Pelosi and other Democrat leaders kneeling and wearing Kente Cloth to honor the black career violent criminal and drug dealer George Floyd? Did black businesses or any businesses for that matter board up their windows and lock their doors when Kirk was murdered by the Democratic left?

No.

Don’t give me a cheap “both sides” argument about the murder of Charlie Kirk. For years and years, the bullets and the violence have flowed from the left. And American journalism–where I spent 40 years of my life–twists reality to spin the news and gaslight the people.

“Hours after Charlie Kirk was murdered, allegedly by a shooter who accused him of “spreading hate,” The New York Times falsely accused Kirk of making antisemitic statements,” wrote Brianna Lyman in The Federalist under the headline “After His Murder, New York Times Assassinates Charlie Kirk’s Character.”

After getting pushback for using lies to assassinate Kirk’s character, instead of publicly apologizing, the Times’ Ashley Ahn and Maxine Joselow quietly issued a small correction noting the comment was not Kirk’s but a quote he was critiquing.

“An earlier version of this article described incorrectly an antisemitic statement that Charlie Kirk had made on an episode of his podcast. He was quoting a statement from a post on social media and went on to critique it. It was not his own statement,” says the correction notice.”

The leftist pathology continues, with Democrats in Congress—such as New York U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocascio Cortez–dragging Kirk through the mud.

Pritzker is a coward yes, but he reminds me of the ultimate left-wing bureaucrat, Dolores Umbridge from the “Harry Potter” novels. The cruel and manipulative witch Ms. Umbridge dressed in various shades of pink who delights in torturing others, but is terrified of being confronted, like Pritzker was after he loudly blurted out his  “I have never called Republicans Nazis” comment.

In Illinois, Niemerg and other Republicans have been critical of Pritzker in recent months, including for remarks he made during the McIntyre-Shaheen 100 Club Dinner in which he called for “mass protests” and “disruption” when it comes to resisting the Trump administration’s policies.

“When you compare Republicans to Nazis, to the fascist movement in the 1930s and Adolf Hitler, that is tantamount to the same thing,” he said. “It’s very clear he compared Republicans like myself to Nazi Germany, to fascism.”

Perhaps in other states Pritzker’s bald-faced lie would be news. But journalism in Illinois has been broken by publishers bending  over backwards to appease the political left in the last few years, ever since the Tribune defamed its lead columnist for daring to publicly criticize the do-nothing prosecutors installed in Democrat cities by leftist billionaire George Soros.

In recent days I’ve searched the Tribune and Sun-Times hoping to find such stories of Pritzker’s bald-faced lie about never portraying Republicans as fascists and Nazis, but as of this writing (Friday evening) I couldn’t find the stories by their political writers. Did they lose their thumbs or just their gumptions?

Pritzker has been twisted in knots as of late. His administration has been accused of scrubbing out news photos from state websites that infuriate him, like those of his so-called Peace Keepers involved in violent crime. He has the money to wipe up his sins. And the people of Illinois, so abused by the political bosses for so long, slapped and taxed and lied to year after year, just chew their cud and shuffle silently through the livestock chutes as do cattle at the slaughterhouse.

Will they ever wake up?

Pritzker hopes not.

More than 100 years ago, French behavioralists at the Mécanisme de la Physionomie Humaine began to study the face of fear in humans. I’d rather not study the fear in J.B. Pritzker’s face if I can help it, but for those of you who don’t follow Illinois politics, understand: Pritzker has always been afraid, bringing to mind the line from the movie Gladiator about the terrified emperor Commodus.

The French behavioralists made a study of fear, and photographed many subjects in the lunatic asylums. Below is a photograph from one such study.

Pritzker’s fear displayed itself in his 1998 campaign for Congress to succeed the late Sidney Yates. He was terrified of being confronted by the much more progressive rival -Jan Schakowsky–who was something of a giant shrew. One of his handlers, former newspaper reporter Jack Lavin of the outfit-connected Hotel Workers union contacted me. With Shakowsky shrieking at him, Prizker wore the same face of fear that the old French behavioralists had found in their subjects:

A paralyzing, irrational fear.

I had just started writing my newspaper column at the paper and Jack Lavin called to ask me for a favor.

“Can you just talk to this kid? Just talk to him. He’s f’ng terrified.”

Sure, Jack. I’ll talk to him.

I took them both to one of my favorite old-school Chicago restaurants that Rich Daley had taken me to when he was Cook County State’s Attorney.

Bruna’s Ristorante, 2424 S Oakley Ave, Chicago. And I ordered my favorite meal, veal saltimbocca with a side of linguini aglio e olio, and a bottle of chianti on the Tribune’s expense account. Sage, veal, butter, what’s not to like?  If I were on Death Row having my last meal, I want it to be the veal saltimbocca from Bruna’s. And for dessert? A glass of Sambuca with three coffee beans, followed by a fine Maduro cigar.

I told JB not to worry about Schakowsky. She couldn’t buy him, I said. All he had to do was to stand up to her. Be a man, J.B. I thought about saying something like a coward dies a thousand deaths but a brave man dies but once. But I didn’t bother.

I turned in my chair to really look at the man.

He just whimpered slightly, staring at his plate of linguini.

But he ate all of it.

-30-

(Copyright John Kass 2025)

About the author: John Kass spent decades as a political writer and news columnist in Chicago working at a major metropolitan newspaper. He is co-host of The Chicago Way podcast. And he just loves his “No Chumbolone” hat, because johnkassnews.com is a “No Chumbolone” Zone where you can always get a cup of common sense.

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