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President Donald Trump got into a heated exchange with an NBC News reporter outside the White House on Sunday after he was asked if he was planning to “go to war with Chicago.”
Trump stoked outrage after he posted a provocative meme to his Truth Social page Saturday, which depicted him as Robert Duvall’s character, Lieutenant Colonel William Kilgore, from “Apocalypse Now.”
The meme was captioned: “I love the smell of deportations in the morning… Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of War… Chipocalypse now.” Some Democrats interpreted the meme to indicate that Trump was going to war with the city of Chicago.
“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. Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator,” Illinois Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker posted on X.
DEMOCRATS SLAM TRUMP FOR ‘WAR’ THREATS TARGETING US CITIES: ‘NOT YOUR WAR ZONE’
“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,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson wrote.
When NBC News White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor asked Trump outside the White House before he set off to the U.S. Open whether he was trying to “go to war with Chicago,” Trump gave a fiery response.
“When you say that, darling, that’s fake news,” Trump said.
Alcindor attempted to respond, but Trump told her to listen.
“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,” he said. “That’s not war, that’s common sense.”
CHICAGO MAYOR CALLS TRUMP’S FEDERALIZATION THREATS ‘BENEATH THE HONOR OF OUR NATION,’ PROTESTS PLANNED
Trump has been mulling deploying National Guard troops to quell crime in the Windy City, but has faced opposition from Pritzker and other local officials. Without state cooperation, National Guard troops are typically restricted to defending federal property.
Chicago recorded 573 homicides in 2024, marking the 13th straight 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 declined by 4% compared to 2023 but remained 4% higher than in 2019. The council reported that gun assaults fell 15%, though they were still 5% above 2019 levels, and that carjackings dropped 32% year-over-year, yet were 25% higher than in 2019.
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Shortly after the tense exchange, Trump sparred with ABC senior White House correspondent Selina Wang when she asked why he would deploy troops to Chicago when there are cities in the U.S. with higher crime rates.
“Excuse me, do you know how many people were killed in Chicago last weekend? Eight. Do you know many people who were killed in Chicago the week before? Seven. Do you how many were wounded? Seventy-four people were wounded. You think there’s worse than that? I don’t think so,” Trump said.
Eight people were killed, and 50 others were wounded in Chicago in 38 separate shootings over Labor Day weekend.
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