CHICAGO (WGN) — President Donald Trump and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker continued their long-running war of words on Tuesday, as the president spoke about using the city of Chicago as a training ground for military troops.
Arguing the US is fighting a war from within, Trump floated a new way on how he might like to use the military in the Windy City. During a rare gathering of America’s top military commanders, Trump defended using troops to help police cities and took aim at Chicago.
“I told Pete (Hegseth), we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, National Guard, but military, because we’re going into Chicago very soon,” Trump said. “That’s a big city with an incompetent governor, stupid governor. Stupid.”
President Trump’s threat to send troops to Chicago seems closer to becoming reality after the Department of Homeland Security sent a memo to the Defense Department seeking help protecting immigration enforcement agents and facilities.
“It appears that Donald Trump – not only has dementia set in, but he’s copying the tactics of Vladimir Putin,” Pritzker said.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson also addressed Trump’s comments, saying, “American cities are not a training ground for the military. Quite frankly, it’s appalling that he would even suggest such a thing. This is further evidence and proof that he’s an unstable, unhinged individual.”
Pritzker says the Trump administration is using the need to protect the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as a way to normalize the use of the military in American cities. The governor says that’s why he won’t call the president.
“Every weekend they lose five, six – if they lose five, they’re considering it a great week, they shouldn’t lose any,” Trump said. “He’s always up there saying, ‘We’re in good shape, we don’t need the military.’ No, they need the military desperately.”
Johnson, who touts Chicago’s gains in reducing crime, blasted the president’s interest in cities with diverse communities.
“Where the population is most pronounced, which is our cities where working-class people live, Black, brown, white, Asian families live, that this is somehow a playground for his militarized obsession,” Johnson said.
As the mayor and governor work to keep residents informed, they acknowledge that there’s only so much they can do to counter the federal government.
“There is nothing we can do in terms of putting our law enforcement in the way of federal law enforcement when they are carrying out – wrong but accurate – federal laws,” Pritzker said. “We need comprehensive immigration reform, that is what will matter. And what we can do when it comes to troops being sent into Chicago and the state of Illinois is immediately go to court. We’re prepared to do that.”
Some elected officials in Illinois say they do want the Trump administration’s help. Cook County commissioner Sean Morris, a Republican, called the mayor and governor’s statements about federal law enforcement activity “reckless.”
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