Featured Image Credit: Truth/Donald J. Trump
Topics: Donald Trump, Chicago, Artificial Intelligence, Crime
Liv Bridge
Topics: Donald Trump, Chicago, Artificial Intelligence, Crime
Donald Trump has turned to artificial intelligence to send an alarming message to a US city.
On Saturday (September 6), President Trump dropped a pretty strange image alongside a threatening note to Chicago on his Truth Social platform.
Inspired by the movie Apocalypse Now, the AI-generated snap of the POTUS imagines him posing as Robert Duvall's character, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, to a backdrop of fiery death and destruction.
In the parody, the Chicago skyline can be seen jutting into the orange sky while several helicopters fly overhead and supposedly 'Colonel Trump' is sitting on a burning beach in what looks like a nod to a war zone.
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The image also has 'Chipocalypse Now' scrawled over it.
If that wasn't clear enough, Trump accompanied the image with a note directly to the city ahead of his plan to bring the National Guard in amid his initiative to militarise Washington, D.C. and crackdown on crime.
He wrote: "Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR," in reference to his recent rebranding of the Department of Defense.
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Trump also made a tongue-in-cheek jibe about his aggressive immigration policy, adding: "'I love the smell of deportations in the morning...'", a twist on Duvall's quote: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning."
The apparent threat of 'war' comes as Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, an opponent of Trump, gave the city a heads up about a possible influx of around 300 immigration enforcement agents.
After Trump's AI-generated snap, Pritzker wrote on X: "The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal.
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"Donald Trump isn't a strongman, he's a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator."
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson added: "The President’s threats are beneath the honor of our nation, but the reality is that he wants to occupy our city and break our Constitution. We must defend our democracy from this authoritarianism by protecting each other and protecting Chicago from Donald Trump."
However, the POTUS has since clarified his position, suggesting the post was in jest and there is no real war to be had.
"We're not going to war. We're going to clean up our cities," he told reporters yesterday (September 7).
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"We're going to clear them up so they don't kill every five people every weekend," Trump added. "That's not war. That's common sense."
In August, Trump announced a federal takeover of local police in D.C., revealing he had instructed the National Guard to fight crime and drive the homeless out.
Now, he's looking at repeating the plan across several other blue-state US cities, including Baltimore and New York City.
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"The people of Chicago... are screaming for us to come," Trump said at the time.
"African-American ladies, beautiful ladies, are saying, 'Please President Trump, come to Chicago, please,' " he said. "I did great with the Black vote, as you know. They want something to happen... So I think Chicago will be our next, then we're gonna help with New York."
In a press conference, Pritzker stated there is 'no emergency' in the city 'that warrants deployment of troops' and said Trump was 'insulting the people' by calling their home a 'hellhole'.
But the president doubled-down, claiming six people were murdered and 12 were shot in Chicago over the weekend.
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He added: "This would mean that over the past number of weeks, approximately 50 people were killed, and hundreds were shot, many expected to die. Governor Pritzker just stated that he doesn’t want Federal Government HELP! WHY???
"I want to help the people of Chicago, not hurt them. Only the Criminals will be hurt!"