Trump engaged in a heated exchange on Sunday, September 7, 2025 while responding to queries of reporters.
US President berated NBC News correspondent Yamiche Alcindor after she asked about his plans to deploy the National Guard to Chicago.
The reporter further accused him of wanting to “go to war” with the city.
The accusation was backed by a meme Trump shared on his Truth Social platform featuring an AI-generated image evoking the film Apocalypse Now with caption: “I love the smell of deportations in the morning. Chicago about to find out why it's called the Department of WAR.”
The caption also references his recent executive order to rename the “Department of Defense” to the “Department of War”.
The reporter asked him, “Are you trying to go to war with Chicago?”
Trump initially dismissed her question by saying, “when you say that, darling, that’s fake news.”
She tried to follow up but Trump snapped, “Be quiet, listen! You don’t listen! You never listen. That’s why you’re second-rate. We are not going to war, we’re gonna clean up our cities.”
He also defended his decision by claiming, “That’s not war, that’s common sense.”
The plan has received a lot of opposition.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has repeatedly made the argument that federal intervention is unwanted and unnecessary, and constitutes an authoritarian exercise.
The relocation has also sparked demonstrations in Chicago as activists and local leaders reasserted the sanctuary policies in the city.
The power of a president to deploy National Guard troops without the approval of a governor has been questioned by legal experts, and perhaps undermined by a federal court decision in the near past that declared a prior deployment to Los Angeles to be unlawful.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration used a reported crime reduction in Washington, D.C., after a similar intervening move as justification of the Chicago plan.