President Donald Trump made clear that any federal law enforcement operation in Chicago will be to tackle crime, rebutting Democrats’ concerns about an earlier threat the president made to unleash the Department of War on the city.
Trump berated a reporter outside the White House on Sunday who asked if he was “ready to go to war” with Chicago, calling her “second rate” before defending any action he takes on crime as “common sense.”
“Be quiet, listen. You don’t listen. You never listen. That’s why you’re second-rate. We’re not going to war, we’re gonna clean up our cities. We’re gonna clean them up, so they don’t kill five people every weekend. That’s not war, that’s common sense,” the president said.
Trump’s comments follow him sharing an AI-generated imaged titled “Chipocalypse Now” to Truth Social on Saturday, which features the president in a military outfit, helicopters near the Chicago skyline, and flames behind him. The meme includes the quote, “I love the smell of deportations in the morning,” playing on the famous line from the 1979 Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now. It also is captioned, “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”
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The post sparked immediate backlash from Democratic lawmakers, many of whom represent Illinois. Those included Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), and Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL), who Trump has sparred with over the past two weeks as he teases a crime crackdown in Chicago similar to the one in Washington, D.C.
Such a crackdown could be coming as soon as this week. Border czar Tom Homan revealed earlier on Sunday that the public should “absolutely” expect federal action in Chicago and “most” sanctuary cities across the United States in the coming days.
