U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday (September 6, 2025) amplified his guarantees to ship National Guard troops and immigration brokers to Chicago by posting a parody picture from “Apocalypse Now” that includes a ball of flames as helicopters zoom over the nation’s third-largest metropolis.
“’I love the smell of deportations in the morning’,” Mr. Trump wrote on his social media website.
“Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” The President provided no particulars past the label “Chipocalypse Now”, a play on the title of Francis Ford Coppola’s dystopian 1979 film set in the Vietnam war, in which a character says: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”
In response to the put up, Illinois Governor J B Pritzker, a Democrat, referred to as Mr. Trump a “wannabe dictator”.
Mr. Trump on Friday (September 5, 2025) signed an government order searching for to rename the Department of Defense the Department of War, after months of campaigning to be thought of for the Nobel Peace Prize. The renaming requires congressional approval.
The illustration in Mr. Trump’s put up exhibits him towards a backdrop of the Chicago skyline, sporting a hat matching that of the film’s war-loving and amoral Lt Col Kilgore, performed by Robert Duvall.
Mr. Trump’s weekend put up follows his repeated threats so as to add Chicago to the listing of different Democratic-led cities he is focused for expanded federal enforcement. His administration is about to step up immigration enforcement in Chicago, because it did in Los Angeles, and deploy National Guard troops.
In addition to sending troops to Los Angeles in June, Mr. Trump has deployed them since final month in Washington, as a part of his unprecedented regulation enforcement takeover of the nation’s capital.
He’s additionally recommended that Baltimore and New Orleans may get the identical remedy, and on Friday even talked about federal authorities probably heading for Portland, Oregon, to “wipe ’em out”, meaning protesters. He could have been mistakenly describing video from demonstrations in that city years ago.
Details about Mr. Trump’s promised Chicago operation have been sparse, but there’s already widespread opposition. City and state leaders have said they plan to sue the Trump administration. Pritzker, a possible 2028 presidential candidate, is also fiercely opposed to it.
The President “is threatening to go to war with an American city”, Mr. Pritzker wrote on X over an image of Mr. Trump’s post.
“This is not a joke. This is not normal.” He added: “Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.” Mr. Trump has recommended that he has almost limitless powers in the case of deploying the National Guard. At instances he is even touched on questions on his being a dictator.
“Most people are saying, ‘If you call him a dictator, if he stops crime, he can be whatever he wants’ — I am not a dictator, by the way,” Mr. Trump stated final month.
He added, “Not that I don’t have — I would — the right to do anything I want to do.” “I’m the president of the United States,” Trump said then. “If I think our country is in danger — and it is in danger in these cities — I can do it.”
