Analysis by Todd Lassa

President Trump is a physically fit US Army officer in “Chipocalypse Now,” his early-Saturday Truth Social post in which he wrote, “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”

Trump’s face is inserted onto Robert Duvall’s body, as Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore from Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979).

“I love the smell of deportations in the morning,” Trump posted changing Kilgore’s “napalm,” from Kilgore’s famous line shouted over the sound of Army helicopters strafing a river controlled by the Viet Cong and blasting Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries from external speakers, to “deportations.”

In “Chipocalypse Now” (which sounds like it should be about the Chipotle Mexican Grill chain’s years-old food safety problems) the background behind the Kilgoresque Trump is not Vietnam but the Chicago skyline – on fire.

Later Saturday, peaceful protesters marched against the apparently impending federal deployments, and a previously planned Mexican Independence Day parade in a Chicago suburb proceeded with no problems, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. 

But on Sunday, Trump called a reporter’s question about why he would deploy the Department of Defense to Chicago “fake news,” The New York Times reports.

“We’re not going to war, we’re going to clean them up so they don’t kill five people every weekend,” Trump said, referring to cities where he is considering, or planning to, send in National Guard. “That’s not war. That’s common sense.”

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat and major Trump critic said, “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.”

Also, it appears to be illegal. Last Tuesday a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration’s deployment of US military in Los Angeles violated the Posse Comitatus Act. The judge gave the administration to September 12, this Friday, to appeal his decision.

What are the chances the administration will do that?

Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, told CNN’s State of the Union Sunday the words in the Truth Social post were “taken out of context,” and that the administration is going to war with criminal cartels, illegal aliens and other public safety threats.

Gov. Pritzker has suggested that what’s really going on is that Trump is working out the logistics of voter suppression in urban areas – the densely populated, largely Democratic cities where he lost the 2020 presidential election – for the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential election.

Consider new redistricting maps in Texas to conform with Trump’s demand for five additional, guaranteed Republican seats in the US House of Representatives and the White House appointment of 2020 election denier Heather Honey to secretary of election integrity at the Department of Homeland Security. 

Leaders in the Democratic Party are counting on next year’s midterms to flip the Republican Party’s thin majorities in the House and Senate and start to check President Trump’s power. 

Are they too late?