President Donald Trump, treated with artificial intelligence to look like the famously unhinged Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now,” sits in front of a Chicago waterfront set ablaze. “Chipocalypse Now,” the image reads, with the captions, “I love the smell of deportations in the morning” and “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of War.”
‘This is not normal’
Trump’s Truth Social post, shared around noon on Saturday, references not only Kilgore’s iconic line, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” but also the president’s recent announcement that, with an executive order, he is looking to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War.
At the same time, the post is an ominous warning to Chicago. Trump and Chicago’s leaders have been in a heated battle for weeks over the president’s threats to deploy the National Guard in the city.
In response to Trump’s post, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said the president’s behavior is “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.”
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Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday that he will send federal law enforcement to Chicago in response to what he said is rising crime. According to FBI data for 2024, Chicago’s homicide rate is below the national high.
Pritzker and the city’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, have both opposed the move. The governor said earlier this week that the state was blindsided by the announcement, having learned about a deployment 72 hours before Trump’s press conference.
Representatives for Coppola did not immediately return Straight Arrow News’ request for comment.
‘We Are All DC’
Trump has been escalating federal intervention in local law enforcement operations since first deploying thousands of National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles in June. A federal judge recently ruled that those deployments violated the law.
Trump also ordered the federal takeover of Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department in August. While conflicting reports have emerged regarding the willingness of local leaders to work with the administration, tensions on the ground have boiled over, culminating in a protest Saturday afternoon.
“We feel like the whole city is being undermined. We don’t want this,” Donna Geraci, a D.C. resident and social worker, told Reuters. “We don’t need this. We want to tell them to get out of our city, we’ve got this.”
Thousands turned out Saturday, gathering under the banner “We Are All DC.” The demonstrators held signs in support of D.C.’s sanctuary city policies while chanting “No hate, no fear. Immigrants are welcome here!” Messages supporting trans rights and Palestinian liberation were also on full display.
Public school teacher Sarah Mintz, 35, said her students are “terrified” to go to school.
“I’m seeing the effects on my community,” Mintz said of the federal presence in D.C. “My students are terrified to come to school. My students’ families are afraid to leave their houses because of ICE, and nobody should have to live like this. D.C. does not want this, and it’s time for the police occupation to end.”
Louisiana support
Trump’s military deployments in U.S. cities have exclusively targeted Democrat-led jurisdictions. However, on Wednesday, Louisiana’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, said he would welcome federal deployments across the state.
“You have New Orleans, which has a crime problem, and we’re going to be straightening that out in about two weeks,” Trump said Thursday.
As with all of the other cities that have seen federal deployments, New Orleans –– which is run by Democrats despite Louisiana’s GOP leanings –– is on track to have its safest year in five decades as the city posts historically low homicides, according to city police.
