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President Donald Trump and the Republicans are playing a game of “pin the tail” — of crime — “on the donkey.” The Democrats, that is.

Chicago’s donkey class has been out in full force to push back at Trump’s threat to send the National Guard to the Windy City to fight crime. They stood tall downtown, near the despised Trump Tower, to rail against the president and condemn his plan.

“Mr. President, do not come to Chicago,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker declared at the news conference. He was flanked by dozens of elected officials and leaders from the city’s religious, civic and business sectors. “You are neither wanted here nor needed here.”

Mayor Brandon Johnson doubled down.

“No federal troops in the city of Chicago! No militarized force in the city of Chicago!” Johnson exhorted at a Labor Day workers rally. “We’re going to defend our democracy in the city of Chicago,” he added. “We’re going to protect the humanity of every single person in the city of Chicago.”

There is no mistaking that the Democrats are on thin ice with their knee-jerk and obligatory nods to local prerogative. The GOP is pinning the Dems: It’s “us,” the Republicans, who want “law and order,” versus “them,” the Democrats, who are excusing violence.

That is a silly and inaccurate oversimplification.

Of course, the Democrats oppose crime, but they are choosing to entrust local law enforcement with our safety, not the National Guard or other federal troops. Imagine that.

The jury is in, and overwhelmingly, the cache of anecdotal opinions is saying “no” to the Guard.

Everyone who lives in Chicago knows crime is down. But make no mistake: One murder is one murder too many. Too many, like over the Labor Day weekend, when at least 54 people were shot, and seven killed, in violence on the city’s South and West sides, ABC affiliate WLS-Ch. 7 reported. There were at least two mass shootings.

I sympathize with Larry Snelling, Chicago’s hardworking police superintendent, who is doggedly pushing his ranks to knock crime down.

Those efforts are being demeaned by Trump, who thinks he is omnipotent. Crime is coming down, yet Snelling must swallow the opprobrium of a president sitting in the Oval Office and sporting a red baseball cap that trumpets “Trump was right about everything!” Trump, please turn it inside out and backward.

Trump says he wants to hear from Illinois. He wants us to beg him to bring in the Army and recently slammed Pritzker on Truth Social, calling him “weak and pathetic.”

The governor, Trump declared, “just said that he doesn’t need help in preventing CRIME. He is CRAZY!!! He better straighten it out, FAST, or we’re coming!”

Trump is lying, as usual. Pritzker and Johnson have not said they don’t need help. They just don’t need federal troops.

This is a conundrum for the Democrats.

Downplaying the obvious and searingly painful crime plaguing Chicago neighborhoods is unacceptable and dangerous. It plays into the hands of Trump and other Republicans who argue that Democrats don’t care about the safety of their own constituents.

They can’t permit the Republicans to gain the high ground on the issue of law and order. Do the Democrats want to own the issue of crime in the midterm elections?

So, the politicians must do more than push back against the White House tyrant. That may get them guest slots to rant on MSNBC, but that won’t help Chicago neighborhoods that are being held hostage by homegrown criminals who are shooting, carjacking and robbing them of their security and vitality.