FACE, MEET PALM: Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s virtue signaling backfires.

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has a nice warm office. So why instead hold a press conference out in the cold on the violence-ridden 16th Street Mall? Well, for image management, of course.

What better way to show how safe and non-stabby the streets of Denver are than a picture of Mayor Johnston calmly standing on those blood-soaked streets, worry free for his own safety.

I could almost see the mayor’s taxpaid, cocky communications expert saying, “I’ve got it mayor! Do a press conference out on the 16th Street Mall and when people see you’re not getting stabbed or accosted it’ll prove how safe you’ve made the city! They’ll love you even more!”

Brilliant! That is, until the mayor himself got accosted during his own press conference.

I spent more weekends on the 16th Mall than I can count. But that was when Colorado and Denver were still sane, and when the streets didn’t reek of pot and hadn’t been colonized by the psychotic.