Trump threatens war… with Chicago!

Donald Trump stirred up controversy this weekend when he posted a threatening message on Truth Social, claiming that Chicago “is about to find out” why he renamed the “Department of Defense” to the “Department of War”.

Trump posted online that Chicago was “about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” but later said his administration wouldn’t go to war with American cities but rather “clean them up.”

— NPR (@npr.org) 2025-09-08T12:57:16.218672Z

He accompanied his statement with an AI-generated image with a nod to the film Apocalypse Now.

The image shows Trump wearing the hat of Lieutenant-Colonel Kilgore, played by Robert Duvall, with Chicago in flames in the background after U.S. Army helicopters have passed by.

This meme was widely criticized, especially as it contained the phrase “I love the smell of deportations in the morning”, a parody of Duvall’s famous line.

Trump then tried to calm the controversy by asserting that his administration is “not going to war” with Chicago.

JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, strongly denounced Trump’s post on X, saying his threat to wage war on an American city was neither a joke nor something normal, and asserting that his state will not be intimidated by a “wannabe dictator.”