President Donald Trump evoked one of the most iconic battle scenes in the history of cinema in a meme Saturday and sent Democrats into various states of shell shock.
On Truth Social, Trump posted an AI-generated photo of himself in the role played by actor Robert Duvall in the 1979 film Apocalypse Now, rebranding it as “Chipocalypse Now” and writing, “I love the smell of deportations in the morning. Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”
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It’s a reference to the president’s rebranding of the Department of Defense and the administration’s anticipated crackdown on illegal immigration in the Windy City, which is pictured in the background of the photo.
Trump’s words evoke Duvall’s famous line during his calvary unit’s helicopter assault in the Vietnam war: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning. It smells like victory”:
The post brought a predictable response from Democrats and media critics.
The Drudge Report, no longer a conservative media aggregator, led with the image and the headline: “Trump Unhinged.”
Democrat Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Saturday called Trump’s post “not normal.”
“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 on X. “Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”
President’s Trump’s latest trolling of Illinois and Chicago politicians comes after days of their tough talk and threats in opposition to an immigration crackdown expected in the country’s third largest city and the possibility of troops being used in the effort.
As Breitbart News reported Friday, equipment and federal personnel have been arriving at Naval Station Great Lakes, on the shores of Lake Michigan north of Chicago, in preparation for the operation.
Pritzker has promised a lawsuit if military personnel are involved. And while critics are blasting Trump for the use of a violent war image, Chicago’s own Mayor Brandon Johnson has provocatively urged Chicagoans to “rise up” in violence against federal law enforcement officers.
The Trump administration has also reserved the option to dispatch the National Guard, as it did in Los Angeles, if there is a violent reaction to the immigration roundup.
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The president has also proposed that Chicago’s crime problem — which includes hundreds of shootings and homicides each year, mostly on the south side — could be dramatically reduced by a local law enforcement effort aided by the National Guard, similar to the effort in past weeks in Washington, DC.
When asked last Tuesday about sending National Guard troops into the city, Trump said, “We’re going,” but quickly added, “I didn’t say when. We’re going in.”
Johnson, despite his own threats of citizen violence against the Trump crackdown, appeared to try to take a higher road as he posted 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,” he said. “We must defend our democracy from this authoritarianism by protecting each other and protecting Chicago from Donald Trump.”
Even California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) had to get in on the pile on, posting on X, “The President of the United States is deploying the military onto US streets and using our troops like political pawns. DO NOT ALLOW YOURSELF TO BECOME NUMB TO THIS.”
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) called the president a “draft dodger.”
Political commentator turned long-time Trump critic Bill Kristol simply wrote, “Fascism.”
Former Obama strategist David Axelrod wrote, “He’s TRYING to provoke a confrontation. Don’t take the bait, Chicagoans.”
Those critics. and many others, all reposted the “Chipocalypse” image. If the president’s aim was to have the image go viral on social media, his detractors may have given him a helping hand.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more
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