President Donald Trump threatened Chicago with his newly-renamed “Department of War” on Saturday, prompting anger from city and state officials who have been preparing for a looming deployment of National Guard troops to the city for weeks.
“‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning…’ Chicago is about to find out why it’s called the Department of War,” Trump’s post on Truth Social said, accompanied by what appeared to be an AI-generated depiction of himself as Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore from the 1979 Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now. The words “Chicopolyse Now” were emblazoned on the image, a reference to Apocalypse Now, and the background showed a burning city and helicopters flying away.
The post prompted anger from state and city officials. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker called Trump a “wannabe dictator” and took the post as a threat to “go to war” with Chicago.
“The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city,” Pritzker wrote on X. “This is not a joke. This is not normal.”
“Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator,” he added.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson accused Trump of “authoritarianism.”
“The President’s threats are beneath the honor of our nation, but the reality is that he wants to occupy our city and break our Constitution,” he wrote on X.
The post follows Trump’s Friday executive order that rebranded the Department of Defense as the Department of War, a move the president claimed sent “a message of strength.”
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said during the press conference Friday that the name indicates the department is “going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct.”
Read More: Trump Signs Executive Order Rebranding Department of Defense as the ‘Department of War’
Trump’s threats against Chicago follow his decision to federalize D.C.’s police department and deploy National Guard troops on the streets on Aug. 11, citing violent crime—even though data showed that violent crime in the nation’s capital had already been declining significantly. Since then, the President has threatened similar deployments in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Baltimore, and Oakland.
Johnson and Pritzker have both been staunchly opposed to Trump’s threats of federal intervention. Last weekend, Johnson signed an executive order directing the city’s police force not to cooperate with federal agents in a potential crackdown on crime and immigration.
“We will protect our constitution. We will protect our city. And we will protect our people. We do not want to see tanks in our streets. We do not want to see families ripped apart,” Johnson said as he announced his executive order.
Pritzker has said that he will “absolutely” sue Trump and the federal government if he actually does deploy troops, adding to the multiple lawsuits already filed by Chicago against the President since his return to office in January.
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