Trump declares war on Chicago. What an example of incompetent leadership | Opinion
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Trump threatens federal action in Chicago, sparking backlash from officials.
- Operation Midway Blitz deploys agents to Chicago, targeting criminal activity.
- Critics oppose military-style policing, favoring ATF-based crime reduction efforts.
Chicago, according to President Donald Trump, is a “hellhole.”
This from the president busy gilding the White House with gold-leaf decor and building a ballroom large enough to force the removal of the former lawn at the Rose Garden.
This president has played many of the world’s golf courses at exclusive clubs. Has he ever dared to step foot into a real “hellhole” neighborhood anywhere? Has he ever visited the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago? Or Los Angeles, or the District of Columbia?
Webster’s Dictionary defines a hellhole as “a place of extreme misery or squalor.” To be sure, Chicago has rundown neighborhoods and a high rate of murders and other serious crimes. But most big cities in America share those troubles. Chicago can boast an incredible waterfront, downtown and world-class museums. Hellhole? That’s ridiculous.
Trump’s latest display of disdain of an American city came last weekend when he posted his now infamous “Chipocalypse” meme on his Truth Social account.
“I love the smell of deportations in the morning...” he wrote. The aviator-sunglasses-clad Trump sports a U.S. Cavalry hat. It is the image of fictional character Lt. Col. William Kilgore in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 film “Apocalypse Now.” In the movie about America’s role in the Vietnam War, Kilgore says “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” before a village gets torched by helicopters shooting down the burning substance.
Trump’s posting also includes this: “Chicago is about to find out why it’s called the Department of War.” Three helicopter emojis follow his new name for what has been known as the Department of Defense.
“The president of the United States essentially just declared war on a major city in his own nation,” said U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois in response. “This is not normal.” Indeed, it is not.
Bring war or fight crime?
Reporters asked him the next day if he truly meant to bring war to Chicago, the city of 2.7 million that Trump has been threatening for weeks with National Guard deployment. “We’re not going to war. We’re going to clean up our cities,” Trump said, in his familiar pattern of revising the original impression he made.
Border czar Tom Homan tried to explain Trump’s latest controversy by saying the war would be against criminal cartels and the like. On Monday the Department of Homeland Security announced the start of “Operation Midway Blitz” to take undocumented criminals into custody in Chicago. CBS news reports 250 federal agents and 140 vehicles will be stationed at a naval base nearby.
Any National Guard deployment to Chicago follows those made in Los Angeles and D.C. About 5,000 National Guard troops and Marines were sent by Trump to Los Angeles in June; nearly all of them had little to do other than protect federal buildings downtown. Most of them have since left.
D.C. is a different matter, since it falls under federal control. Over 2,000 National Guard members are there to ostensibly fight crime. But most are doing menial tasks, like picking up trash.
Trump’s White House has crowed that more than 1,000 arrests have been made in Washington since the deployment began in early August. “Crime in D.C. was the worst ever in history,” Mr. Trump said.
But a CBS news analysis found that D.C. metro police made a similar amount of arrests over the same period in 2024.
ATF program proves successful
Sending military personnel to handle civilian policing is not how fighting crime in America is to be done. Trump knows this but doesn’t care. He loves the theater of it all. But there is a type of federal law enforcement that mayors across the nation say is beneficial.
One program the mayors say works well for them is crime-gun tracing by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Baltimore’s mayor told The New York Times that collaboration with federal agents from the ATF, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration has helped significantly lower his city’s murder rate this year.
“We do not want an occupation, and we also want something that is sustainable,” Mayor Brandon M. Scott told The Times. His is another city Trump has termed a “hellhole.”
Despite such effective cooperation, Trump’s Justice Department plans to “slash the number of inspectors who monitor federally licensed gun dealers by two-thirds,” effectively downsizing the ATF, The Times reports.
How ironic. Getting rid of a program that reduces murders while sending military troops to cities that don’t want them, and where they mostly stand around or clean up trash.
Trump cannot govern without having an enemy; whether it is foreign or American doesn’t matter. That is not leadership, but incompetence. As time goes on, that is becoming the standard of the Trump administration.
This story was originally published September 9, 2025 at 5:30 AM with the headline "Trump declares war on Chicago. What an example of incompetent leadership | Opinion."