He’s also suggested that Baltimore and New Orleans could get the same treatment, and on Friday even mentioned federal authorities possibly heading for Portland, Oregon, to “wipe ’em out”, meaning protesters. He could have been mistakenly describing video from demonstrations in that city years ago.
Details about Trump’s promised Chicago operation have been sparse, but there’s already widespread opposition. City and state leaders have said they plan to sue the Trump administration. Pritzker, a possible 2028 presidential candidate, is also fiercely opposed to it.
The president “is threatening to go to war with an American city”, Pritzker wrote on X over an image of Trump’s post. “This is not a joke. This is not normal.”
He added: “Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”
Trump has suggested that he has nearly limitless powers when it comes to deploying the National Guard. At times, he’s even touched on questions about his being a dictator.
“Most people are saying, ‘If you call him a dictator, if he stops crime, he can be whatever he wants’ – I am not a dictator, by the way,” Trump said last month. He added, “Not that I don’t have – I would – the right to do anything I want to do.”
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“I’m the president of the United States,” Trump said then. “If I think our country is in danger — and it is in danger in these cities — I can do it.”
Trump’s latest post came as thousands of protesters marched across Washington, DC, on Saturday in one of the largest demonstrations against Trump’s federal takeover of policing in the nation’s capital.
Behind a bright red banner reading “END THE D.C. OCCUPATION” in English and Spanish, protesters marched over two miles from Meridian Hill Park to Freedom Plaza near the White House to rail against the fourth week of National Guard troops and federal agents patrolling DC’s streets.
Meanwhile, South Korea said on Saturday that the US release of photos and a video of last week’s arrest of some 475 Korean workers at a Hyundai manufacturing plant in Georgia was regrettable.
Protesters in Washington, DC, on Saturday. Washington officials have sued President Donald Trump over his deployment of thousands of National Guard troops in the nation’s capital.Credit: Bloomberg
US immigration officials raided the Hyundai Motor car battery factory on Thursday and later released a video and photos of workers shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles getting on a bus after the raid.
The crackdown could risk damaging ties between Washington and Seoul, a key Asian ally and US investor, when the two are trying to narrow their differences and finalise a trade deal after a summit between Trump and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung.
First Vice Foreign Minister Park Yoon-joo told US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Allison Hooker in a telephone call that it was regrettable the incident “occurred at a critical time, when the momentum of trust and co-operation between the two leaders, forged through their first summit, must be maintained”, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
AP with Reuters
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