CHICAGO — Illinois Democrats sharply criticized President Donald Trump on Saturday, who suggested in a Truth Social post earlier in the morning that his administration will go to “WAR” with the city of Chicago.
Trump on Saturday posted a likely AI-generated meme on his social media platform, depicting himself as an officer in the 1979 war movie “Apocalypse Now,” with the caption “Chipocalypse Now.”
“Chicago [is] about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” the post read, accompanied by three helicopter emojis, among the president’s most aggressive language targeting an American city.
“Spoken like a true tyrant,” Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), who represents the Southside of Chicago, told POLITICO at the city’s Mexican Independence Day parade Saturday in response to the post.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who has become one of the leading Democratic critics of the president in Trump’s second term, wrote on X that Trump “is threatening to go to war with an American city,” adding that “Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”
“This is not a joke,” Pritzker wrote. “This is not normal.”
Trump’s hostile stance Saturday comes as he ramps up tensions between Democratic-controlled cities over an immigration crackdown. He has deployed National Guard to both Los Angeles and Washington D.C., a practice he would like to expand to other cities, such as Chicago.
“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,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson wrote on X.
The administration has faced legal pushback on the use of National Guard troops in both California and D.C. A federal district judge earlier this week ruled the deployment to L.A. likely violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of military force for domestic law enforcement without proper authority.
D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb filed a similar lawsuit against the administration on Thursday, adding that it infringes on the nation’s capital’s sovereignty.
On Tuesday, Trump said “we’re going in” to Chicago, but did not provide a clear timeline or rationale for the legality of the action. “Chicago is a hellhole right now,” the president added. But the next day, he suggested that New Orleans may be the next target of the administration, not Chicago — a Democratic-run city whose Republican governor has welcomed federal action.
Trump has repeatedly said that he would like to have the state’s governors’ permission before entering the cities.
“I love the smell of deportations in the morning,” Trump wrote in the Saturday social media post, recreating the movie’s “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” quote from lead Robert Duvall.
The administration has painted its encroachment into cities as a crackdown on crime in the cities, but Saturday’s post from the president indicates that their focus may largely be on ICE raids and deportations.
State and local officials have also been bracing for a surge of immigration enforcement agents to descend on Chicago and its suburbs.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), also at Saturday’s parade in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, told POLITICO that Trump “is so irresponsible to what he says and so reckless [that] you never know, he’ll change the story in the next 30 minutes.”
When asked if the post was a declaration of war against the city, Rep. Chuy García (D-Ill.), told POLITICO that “We’ve seen it as a declaration of war against the Mexican community, against the immigrant community.”
“Eight people were killed and over 50 people were wounded last weekend in Chicago but local Democrat leaders are more upset about a post from the President,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement in response to Democrats’ criticism. “That tells you everything you need to know about the Democrats’ twisted priorities and why Chicago has had the most murderers of any US city for 13 consecutive years.”
City and state politicians have decried Trump’s threats toward Illinois. They argue that Trump is not actually concerned with violent crime in cities — pointing to statistics that show Chicago and other major cities are seeing a decline in crime — and instead say the president wants to score political points.
“I take it very seriously that he is instilling fear in the hearts of a lot of people,” Durbin, who is retiring at the end of his term next year, added. “That is his intention, and it’s working.”
Shia Kapos reported from Chicago.
