President Donald Trump posted a meme on social media Saturday saying that Chicago “will find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” as the city’s officials brace for an immigration crackdown.
“I love the smell of deportations in the morning … Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” the post reads. Trump signed an executive order Friday to rebrand the Pentagon as the “Department of War.”
The post includes what appears to be an artificially generated image of the president wearing a hat and sunglasses, with the Chicago skyline in the background, accompanied by text reading “Chipocalypse Now.”
Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Saturday called Trump’s post “not normal.”
“The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal,” Pritzker wrote on X. “Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”
It comes as Trump has ramped up his rhetoric against the country’s third most-populous city. CNN previously reported the Trump administration’s plans to conduct a major immigration enforcement operation in Chicago, and that officials there were bracing for it to begin as early as Friday.
In recent days, personnel from Immigration and Border Protection as well as Customs and Border Protection have begun trickling into the city, White House officials told CNN.
The Trump administration has also reserved the right to call in the National Guard if there is a reaction to the operation that warrants it, the officials said. The Chicago operation is being modeled off of a similar operation carried out in Los Angeles in June. A judge ruled this week that the June deployment broke federal law prohibiting the military from law enforcement activity on US soil in most cases; the Trump administration has appealed.
White House officials have made clear the Chicago immigration crackdown is distinct from the idea the president has floated to use federal law enforcement and National Guard troops to carry out a broader crime crackdown in the city, similar to the operation in Washington, DC.
When asked by a reporter Tuesday about sending National Guard troops into the city, Trump said, “We’re going,” adding, “I didn’t say when. We’re going in.”
Democratic officials who represent Chicago and Illinois also condemned Trump’s post Saturday.
“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,” wrote Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson on social media. “We must defend our democracy from this authoritarianism by protecting each other and protecting Chicago from Donald Trump.”
Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth described Trump’s post on X as “Stolen valor at its worst,” writing, “Take off that Cavalry hat, you draft dodger. You didn’t earn the right to wear it.”
CNN’s Alayna Treene contributed to this report.
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