Pritzker and other libs melt down over Trump's 'Chipocalypse Now' meme, prompting a badly needed reality check

JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, had an ugly meltdown on Saturday about a meme shared by President Donald Trump. When a member of the liberal press took a page out of Pritzker's book and treated the meme as a threat, Trump leaned in with a reality check.

How it started

Days after Pritzker claimed that Trump is "neither wanted here nor needed here," Chicago suffered another bloody Labor Day weekend with at least eight killed and 58 wounded. According to police, America's rattiest city suffered 278 homicides as of Aug. 31.

Trump condemned the violence, warning Pritzker: "Better straighten it out, FAST, or we're coming."

Pritzker and other Democratic officials instead channeled their energies last week into condemning a possible federal intervention rather than meaningfully tackling the underlying issues.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, for instance, kicked things off by signing an executive order "denouncing any attempts to deploy the United States Armed Forces and/or the National Guard and/or militarized civil immigration enforcement in Chicago."

RELATED: This is what Brandon Johnson is blaming for Chicago's violent Labor Day weekend

Vincent Alban/Getty Images (left); Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images (right)

Pritzker then concern-mongered on MSNBC, telling former Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki that Trump's plan is "one that's been repeated over and over again by ... tyrannical dictatorships across history where you try to incite local population into some mayhem by sending in police or other disruptors, and then claim that there's too much mayhem on the ground, and therefore there must be troops that are sent in."

The Democratic governor, who held on tightly to emergency powers through the pandemic and well into 2023, suggested further that the aim of the plan, which has already neutralized most street crime in Washington, D.C., was to "convert a democracy into something other than that."

The meme

At the outset of another weekend marked by numerous fatal shootings in Chicago, Trump shared a meme titled "Chipocalypse Now" that features an AI image of himself as Colonel Bill Kilgore, the fictional commander of the 1st Cavalry Division in "Apocalypse Now," with the Chicago skyline as his backdrop.

Whereas Kilgore, played by Robert Duvall, states in film following an airstrike on potential enemy combatants along a nearby tree line, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning," Trump's meme is captioned, "I love the smell of deportations in the morning."

Trump added, "Chicago about to find out why it's called the Department of WAR."

Pritzker characterized Trump's post as a legitimate threat, writing, "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."

"Donald Trump isn't a strongman, he's a scared man," continued Pritzker. "Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator."

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Pritzker subsequently disseminated guidance on how to handle encounters with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for the apparent benefit of illegal aliens in his state, recommended that residents film federal operatives, and advanced the suggestion that the Trump administration's efforts to restore law and order constituted "atrocities."

Mayor Johnson also decided to interpret Trump's humorous post as a threat, noting, "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."

NBC News' Yamiche Alcindor joined Pritzker and Johnson in spinning the president's meme as a declaration of intent, asking Trump whether he was indeed "going to war with Chicago."

"Darling, that's fake news," said Trump.

When Alcindor began to argue the point, the president responded, "Be quiet. Listen. You don't listen. You never listen. That's why you're second rate."

"We're not going to war. We're going to clean up our cities," said Trump. We're going to clean them up so they don't kill five people every weekend. That's not war. That's common sense."

Trump further underscored on Sunday that he is simply keen on making American cities safe and beautiful.

"Chicago is a very dangerous place, and we have a governor who doesn't care about crime," Trump told reporters on Sunday. "We could solve Chicago very quickly."

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told Blaze News in a statement, “Eight people were killed and over 50 people were wounded over Labor Day weekend in Chicago, but local Democrat leaders are more upset about a post from the president — that tells you everything you need to know about the Democrats' twisted priorities."

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