Rahm Emanuel

We knew growing up that America was a very special place.

Those pictures were a reminder to the three, Ari, Zeke, and I, you're not to mess this up because you got something that nobody else got.

This was a special place.

And I think America's pull is a special place.

There's a gravitational pull towards freedom.

And America has been that place that the, and I don't mean this soapy, I don't want to be, because this story is told in many different languages and different cultures.

But the idea that my grandfather at 15

His three grandsons, one is an oncologist, has made a name for himself.

Another in entertainment, has achieved riches and capacities unimaginable from a shtetl in Moldova.

And that his grandson can be both the mayor of the city he called home and the chief of staff to a president is not the Emanuel story, it's America's story.

And the idea...

that you have ICE agents chasing people, firing tear gas, unnamed, a president attacking people, both religion, gender, or faith, and using that

is unimaginable in a country that opened its arms to him.

And so when we talk and we text him, I saw Ari this weekend, I saw Zeke on Thursday when he was in Chicago.

We all went to see my mother.

It's hard to put into words how we're living through this because this is such a violation of every value and principle from about

four days old to where we are today and i'll close on one thought sure my mother is you know ran core in chicago in their late 50s early civil rights and doing open housing open beaches in chicago and her and grandpa used to fight about politics all the time mom was a much more progressive grandpa was a teddy franklin roosevelt harry truman democrat etc and so my

Mother said the other day, she goes, I have to live another three years.

She's 93.

I have to live another three years just to make sure that that bastard's out of the office.