The president of the United States threatened the city of Chicago with “war” on Saturday, writing on social media, “Chicago [is] about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” along with an AI-generated image of Trump as Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore from the 1979 dystopian warfilm “Apocalypse Now.”
The image has Trump/Kilgore squatting in front of the Chicago skyline with Army cavalry helicopters leaving the scene of a napalm strike above the words “Chipocalypse Now”. In the Francis Ford Coppola film, Kilgore famously said, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” Trump’s social media post featured a variation, reading, “I love the smell of deportations in the morning.”
“This is not normal,” the Illinois governor responded on social media Saturday. “The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke,” said Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker. “Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”
Historian reax: “Although it has become trite to speculate about what Republicans would say if a Democratic president engaged in the behavior Trump exhibits daily, this open attack of the president on an American city is a new level of unhinged,” Boston College’s Heather Cox Richardson responded on Substack.
When asked about the threat on Sunday, the president told reporters, “We’re not going to war. We’re going to clean up our cities. We’re going to clean them up so they don’t kill five people every weekend. That’s not war, that’s common sense.” NPR and CNN have a bit more.
By the way: Sending the National Guard to Chicago could cost taxpayers nearly $1.6 million a day, the Sun-Times reported Friday—citing estimates from the National Priorities Project, which is part of the progressive nonprofit Institute for Policy Studies. That total comes from 2020 costs, which tallied up to about $530 per Guard soldier daily.
Also: Army vet and Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth visited the Naval Station Great Lakes last week. She was joined by her Democratic Senate colleague Dick Durbin and Rep. Brad Schneider because the White House is using the state’s largest military installation at Great Lakes as a training ground for upcoming deportation operations in and around Chicago. During their visit, Duckworth said, “The Navy cooperated and took the time to answer our questions. ”
But Department of Homeland Security officials that “Trump sent to Naval Station Great Lakes didn’t just refuse to meet with us today, they actually locked their doors and fled the base,” Duckworth said in a statement Friday.
“If they were proud of what they are doing or if they believed it was legal, why would they be so secretive? Trump’s continued threats against Chicago are just another effort to distract us from his own scandals, and we shouldn’t let him do that, especially if it means also distracting our servicemembers from their core mission of protecting our nation,” she said.
While announcing his new “secondary” name for the U.S. military, Trump told reporters Friday inside the Oval Office, “Every war we would’ve won easily with just a couple changes.” He continued, “We won the First World War. We won the Second World War. We won everything before that and in between. And then we decided to go woke, and we changed the name to Department of Defense.”
According to the president, “We could have won every war, but we really chose to be very politically correct or woke.” And that’s at least partly why he wants the Defense Department changed to the “War Department,” which will require congressional approval. In the meantime, he’s signed an executive order authorizing the use of titles like “secretary of war” and changing the website from “defense.gov” to “war.gov.” Referring to the country’s post-World War II conflicts, Trump complained, “We wouldn’t lose, really. We’d just fight. Sort of tie. We never wanted to win—wars that, every one of them, we would’ve won easily with just a couple of little changes.”
His defense secretary agreed as he stood beside Trump. “Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct,” Pete Hegseth said to cameras in a room that included Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Dan Caine.
Observation: “The amount of discomfort on the face and in the demeanor” of Chairman Caine during Trump and Hegseth’s remarks Friday “is really quite something and tells you everything you need to know about how most uniformed service members feel about this,” said former West Point history professor “Angry Staff Officer,” writing Monday on social media.
Second opinion: “It’s well worth remembering that war is the failure state,” warns Princeton University Professor Jake Shapiro. “War is what happens when deterrence and diplomacy fail. It’s what happens when your adversary is insufficiently cowed by the threat of fighting you.”
Coverage continues below…
Welcome to this Monday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1974, President Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor Richard Nixon for any crimes he may have committed before his resignation.
Update: Trump’s nominee for the Air Force’s next vice chief has been withdrawn in a move that could leave the service without a chief or a vice chief this fall, Aviation Week reported Friday.
Background: Gen. Thomas Bussiere was nominated in mid-July to replace former Vice Chief Gen. Jim Slife, who was fired in February along with several other officers. Headquarters staff director Lt. Gen. Scott Pleus has been serving as acting vice chief in the months since.
The twist: Last month, service chief Gen. David Allvin said he’d step down from that post two years early, effective in November. Some expected Bussiere “to step into the chief of staff role in an acting capacity” when Allvin leaves, but that’s up in the air now, Brian Everstine of Aviation Week reports. Read more, here.
Developing: The Pentagon is reportedly considering leasing part of California’s Camp Pendleton to developers, with the money going toward the wildly ambitious Golden Dome missile defense system, NBC News reported last week.
New: The U.S. is sending 10 F-35s to Puerto Rico to fight drug trafficking in the Caribbean, Fox reported Friday. Joseph Trevithick of The War Zone noted the deployment may sound unusual, but “The use of high-end air assets to support those missions in the region is actually very well established,” pointing to B-1B bombers based out of Key West six years ago.
Second opinion: “It looks to me like the US military is going to war,” said Fox’s longtime Pentagon correspondent Jennifer Griffin, writing Friday on social media. After all, she continued, “The F35s being sent to Puerto Rico are usually used for large bombing missions like the targeting of Iran’s nuclear facilities—a 5th generation supersonic fighter jet known for its lethality.” And there are “8 US Navy destroyers in the Caribbean near Venezuela[, which] is a first.”
Related: “Venezuela pledged on Sunday to sharply boost troops in coastal states to tackle drug trafficking,” Reuters reported Sunday from Caracas. “Some 25,000 troops are set to be deployed, up from the 10,000 which have been deployed in the states of Zulia and Tachira that border Colombia,” the wire service writes, citing remarks from Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino on Sunday.
Another thing: “Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,” Vice President JD Vance wrote on social media this weekend.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky replied: “What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial.”
Additional reading:
Europe
Russia’s largest air raid of the Ukraine war killed four people and damaged a government building in Kyiv. Sites across the country were targeted by 810 drones and decoys and 13 missiles, according to Ukrainian air force officials who said they downed 747 drones and four missiles. “Hits from nine missiles and 54 drones were recorded at 33 locations across Ukraine,” AP writes. More, here.
Elsewhere in Europe: “Berlin considers purchase of Eurofighters, modernisation of Taurus cruise missile,” Reuters reports.
Around the world
Three undersea cables were cut in the Red Sea, disrupting internet access in Asia and the Mideast. NetBlocks, which monitors internet access, noted “failures affecting the SMW4 and IMEWE cable systems near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia” that cut some internet service to India and Pakistan. In Kuwait, authorities said the FALCON GCX cable had been cut in the Red Sea had been cut.
It’s not clear who cut the cables. AP: “There has been concern about the cables being targeted in a Red Sea campaign by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, which the rebels describe as an effort to pressure Israel to end its war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. But the Houthis have denied attacking the lines in the past.” Read on, here.
Israeli strikes killed more than 40 people overnight in Gaza, AP reports, citing local hospital officials: “At least 19 Palestinians were killed in three separate Israeli strikes, including six children and three women.”
AP: “Officials at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital reported that Israeli strikes on a school-turned-shelter and on tents and apartment buildings killed at least 13 Palestinians, including six children and three women. The Israeli military said it was targeting militants near the school and had warned civilians to evacuate.” Read on, here.
A Houthi drone hit Israel’s southern airport, crashing into the passenger terminal of the Ramon International Airport near Eilat, the Israeli Airports Authority said. One person suffered shrapnel wounds.
Background: “The attack follows Israeli strikes on Yemen’s rebel-held capital that killed the Houthi prime minister and other top officials in a major escalation of the nearly 2-year-old conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group in Yemen,” AP reports.
Lastly: South Korea, Japan pledge to work with the United States to deter North Korea. Reuters reports the first official trip to Seoul by a Japanese defence minister since 2015 “comes amid rising geopolitical tensions in the region and after a show of force by China during a military parade last week attended by North Korea’s leader.” Read more, here.
Also: Seoul is upset after hundreds of South Korean workers were handcuffed and detained during an ICE raid on Hyundai’s manufacturing campus in Georgia last week.
“The raid stunned many in South Korea because the country is a key U.S. ally. It agreed in July to purchase $100 billion in U.S. energy and make a $350 billion investment in the U.S. in return for the U.S lowering tariff rates. About two weeks ago, U.S. President Donald Trump and Lee held their first meeting in Washington,” AP writes.
Read the full article here