On Sunday, President Donald Trump sought to downplay his incendiary and autocratic threat to go to war with the city of Chicago, claiming that his disturbing social media post that depicted him in front of a burning city with the text "Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR" was "fake news."
“We’re not going to war, we’re going to clean up our cities,” Trump told reporters before attending the U.S. Open in New York, where he got mercilessly booed. “We’re going to clean them up so they don’t kill five people every weekend. That’s not war. That’s common sense.”
Trump has already sent the National Guard into Washington, where troops are standing around with rifles doing absolutely nothing. In fact, many of them are being used to pick up trash, a ridiculous waste of taxpayer dollars as well as the National Guard troops' time—as they all have day jobs and families who they are being kept from for a useless political stunt.
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But Trump has declared the stunt to be a success, and has now threatened to send the National Guard to militarize other Democratic-controlled cities. That’s even though cities in Republican-controlled states like Tennessee—whose GOP governor deployed his state’s National Guard troops to D.C.—have more crime.
Trump re-upped that threat on Monday morning, writing in a post on Truth Social, "Washington, D.C. IS A SAFE ZONE IN JUST A MATTER OF WEEKS. Thank you, President Trump. Who’s Next???"
Polls show Trump’s use of the military to police American civilians is overwhelmingly unpopular.
A CBS News survey released Sunday found 43% support his deployment of the National Guard, while 57% oppose it.
That same survey found a whopping 64% of independents, a swing group that could determine the outcome of the 2026 midterms, opposes the National Guard deployment. What’s more, 61% of Americans said they would oppose Trump sending the National Guard into their local areas.
As for Chicago, it’s unclear if Trump will officially send the National Guard there. Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, however, said even the threat is un-American and dangerous.
“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 in a post on X. “Donald Trump isn't a strongman, he's a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”
