{"id":139298,"date":"2025-09-07T11:56:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T11:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/139298\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T11:56:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T11:56:11","slug":"gov-pritzker-calls-trumps-chipocalypse-now-post-not-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/139298\/","title":{"rendered":"Gov. Pritzker calls Trump’s ‘Chipocalypse Now’ post ‘not normal’"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump set the stage for a surge of immigration enforcement actions in Chicago with a social media post<\/a> Saturday morning depicting military helicopters flying over the city\u2019s lakefront using the title \u201cChipocalypse Now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the smell of deportations in the morning \u2026\u201d Trump posted on his Truth Social account, altering a famous phrase from the 1979 movie \u201cApocalypse Now.\u201d In the post, Trump is depicted in U.S. Army fatigues and sunglasses and wearing a Stetson U.S. Cavalry hat like the lieutenant colonel portrayed in the movie by actor Robert Duvall.<\/p>\n

\u201cChicago is about to find out why it\u2019s called the Department of WAR,\u201d Trump wrote, a day after signing an executive order to rename the Department of Defense to its pre-1949 title.<\/p>\n

The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. <\/p>\n

This is not a joke. This is not normal. <\/p>\n

Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won\u2019t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator. pic.twitter.com\/f87Zek7Cqb<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Governor JB Pritzker (@GovPritzker) September 6, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n

The posting was Trump\u2019s latest signal that he may authorize the use of military assets, specifically the National Guard, as part of a stepped-up operation by federal agencies under the Department of Homeland Security, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, anticipated to begin as soon as this weekend<\/a>. But as of Saturday evening, there was no evidence of widespread ICE activity.<\/p>\n

Trump had no public events scheduled for Saturday, leaving his social media post to speak of his agenda after vacillating<\/a> for weeks<\/a> on whether he would deploy the guard in Chicago or in other cities.<\/p>\n

Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, an ardent Trump foe who has vowed to go to court to fight a presidential deployment of the Guard, responded on the social media<\/a> platform X by stating: \u201cThe President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not a joke. This is not normal. Donald Trump isn\u2019t a strongman, he\u2019s a scared man. Illinois won\u2019t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator,\u201d Pritzker wrote.<\/p>\n

In his own social media post<\/a>, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said Trump\u2019s \u201cthreats 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Friday, Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling said he had not received any information about any sweeping federal deployment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last thing our department needs to be is in the dark,\u201d he told the Tribune<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The social media storm occurred hours after Pritzker warned that Trump was embarking on a \u201cnefarious plan\u201d using fear and intimidation to normalize military activities in the nation\u2019s largest Democratic-led cities.<\/p>\n

But the two-term Democratic chief executive, who is seeking a third term and is a potential 2028 White House aspirant, acknowledged that absent the courts, he was powerless to combat Trump\u2019s efforts to detain immigrants through the work of hundreds of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers coming to the city.<\/p>\n

Pritzker, speaking Friday<\/a> on MSNBC\u2019s \u201cThe Briefing with Jen Psaki,\u201d also placed faith in community residents wielding cellphone cameras to help provide video evidence of legal violations that could occur in Chicago and be used in court by the state, as he continued to urge peaceful protests<\/a> to prevent giving Trump a pretext for deploying the National Guard.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s, I believe, a nefarious plan,\u201d Pritzker said. \u201cIt\u2019s one that\u2019s been repeated over and over again by, well, tyrannical dictatorships across history, where you try to incite the local population into some mayhem by sending in police or other disruptors and then claim that there\u2019s too much mayhem on the ground and, therefore, there must be troops that are sent in. And, that\u2019s how you basically convert a democracy into something other than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pritzker has said he thinks the timing of a surge in ICE enforcement in Chicago could be tied to parades and celebrations of Mexican Independence Day.<\/a><\/p>\n

The first major event surrounding the festivities occurred with a major parade on Saturday in the Pilsen neighborhood. With fears that ICE or Border Patrol agents could disrupt the parade, organizers initiated tight security protocols at the 24th annual parade in the heavily Latino neighborhood.<\/p>\n

The parade went off without any immigration enforcement activities taking place. The crowd was considerably smaller than in previous years, but there was also an air of defiance as attendees yelled, \u201cViva, M\u00e9xico!\u201d and carried \u201cNo ICE\u201d signs.<\/p>\n

Trump has repeatedly attacked Chicago as a \u201chellhole<\/a>\u201d over crime, despite statistics showing violent crimes have been reduced<\/a> in recent years.<\/p>\n

But using his June deployment of the National Guard and active-duty Marines to Los Angeles after a sporadic outbreak of anti-ICE protests and, more recently, the federalizing of law enforcement in Washington, D.C.<\/a>, Trump has sought for Republicans to claim a law-and-order political advantage against Democrats heading into next year\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n

A federal court judge in San Francisco ruled<\/a> on Tuesday that Trump\u2019s deployment of the military to Los Angeles, over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom, was unconstitutional. But an appellate court lifted the order on Thursday, saying it needed more time to rule on the merits of the case.<\/p>\n

Pritzker has put his faith in the initial ruling by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, younger brother of former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who was appointed to the nation\u2019s highest court by Democratic President Bill Clinton. Charles Breyer ruled that the National Guard troops were violating the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s all we have, though,\u201d Pritzker said of Breyer\u2019s ruling, which would not cover an Illinois deployment. \u201cRemember, if the courts don\u2019t rule in favor of Posse Comitatus \u2014 that\u2019s an act that prevents, supposedly, the federal government from sending troops into a state to do law enforcement \u2014 if they don\u2019t enforce that or understand what Trump is doing is unconstitutional, then we\u2019re then at the whims of a fighting force that they\u2019re planning to send here.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Trump ultimately does deploy troops to Chicago, his \u201cChipocalypse Now\u201d social media threat could help the state\u2019s efforts in court, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said Saturday in an interview with the Rev. Al Sharpton on MSNBC.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think his comments will have an impact on how the courts view this,\u201d Raoul said. \u201cAnd his childish, un-American, unpresidential post with regards to the Department of War descending upon Chicago, I think that will have (an) impact. It will show that his intent is not a genuine attempt of either immigration enforcement or fighting crime. He\u2019s trying to sow the type of violence and protest that get out of (hand) that might give him an angle\u00a0at being able to deploy\u00a0forces into our city.\u201d<\/p>\n

To assist any state challenge in the federal courts in Illinois, Pritzker has said he has been \u201cvery explicit\u201d to have residents \u201cpull out their iPhone or their Android phone and film what they\u2019re seeing\u201d to provide evidence of the Guard \u201cwhen they kind of trip the wire, so to speak, and there\u2019s been an incident that allows us\u201d to go to court.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo this is the challenge. And I think we need the public to be involved in monitoring that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we\u2019re making sure that we\u2019re also asking the public \u2014 because I know they\u2019re going to protest \u2014 we\u2019re asking them to be peaceful in that protest, to make sure that they\u2019re making their voices heard, they\u2019re using their megaphones and microphones, but that they stay out of the way of these ICE officials,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Pritzker said it was \u201ckind of a frightening development in the history of the country that you have a federal government not communicating with state government about something like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have a lot to share with the public. Whatever I have heard, I have shared with the public, because I think everybody should know, despite the fact that (the) federal government would like them not to know, apparently,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Tribune reporters A.D. Quig and Dan Petrella contributed.<\/p>\n

Originally Published: September 6, 2025 at 3:45 PM CDT<\/p>\n