On Sunday, President Donald Trump engaged in a heated exchange with an NBC News reporter outside the White House after being asked if he planned to “go to war with Chicago.”
Trump sparked outrage by posting a provocative meme to his Truth Social page on Saturday, depicting him as Lieutenant Colonel William Kilgore, played by Robert Duvall in “Apocalypse Now.”
The meme caption read: “I love the smell of deportations in the morning…” Chicago is about to find out why it’s called the Department of War. “Chipocalypse now.” Some Democrats took the meme to mean that Trump was going to war with the city of Chicago.
“The President of the United States has threatened to go to war with an American city; this is not a joke. This isn’t normal. Donald Trump is not a strongman; he is a scared man. “Illinois will not be intimidated by a wannabe dictator,” Illinois Democratic Governor JB Pritzker wrote on X.
“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, we must defend our democracy from this authoritarianism by protecting each other and protecting Chicago from Donald Trump,” Brandon Johnson, Chicago’s mayor, wrote.
When NBC News White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor asked Trump outside the White House before he left for the United States Open if he was trying to “go to war with Chicago,” Trump responded angrily.
“When you say that, darling, that’s fake news,” Trump told her.
Alcindor tried to respond, but Trump told her to listen.
“Be quiet and listen! You do not listen! You never listen. That is why you are second-rate. We aren’t going to war. We’re going to clean up our cities. “We’re going to clean them up so they don’t kill five people every weekend,” he explained. “That’s not war, that’s common sense.”
Trump has considered deploying National Guard troops to combat crime in Chicago, but Pritzker and other local officials have opposed the idea. Without state cooperation, National Guard troops are typically limited to protecting federal property.
Chicago had 573 homicides in 2024, the 13th consecutive year the city led the nation in total murders, according to Chicago Police Department data compiled by Wirepoints.
According to the Council on Criminal Justice’s year-end 2024 update, aggravated assaults decreased by 4% from 2023 but remained 4% higher than in 2019. According to the council, gun assaults decreased by 15%, but remained 5% higher than in 2019, and carjackings decreased by 32% year on year while remaining 25% higher than in 2019.
Shortly after the heated exchange, Trump clashed with ABC senior White House correspondent Selina Wang, who questioned why he would send troops to Chicago when other cities in the United States have higher crime rates.
“Excuse me; do you know how many people were killed in Chicago last weekend? Eight. Do you know how many people were killed in Chicago the week before? Seven. Do you know how many people were wounded? Seventy-four people were wounded. Do you think there is anything worse than that? “I don’t think so,” Trump replied.
Over the Labor Day weekend, 38 separate shootings in Chicago killed eight people and injured 50 others.
