‘We’re going into Chicago very soon:’ Trump doubles down on military presence threat

President Donald Trump said cities like Chicago should be used as “training grounds for our military” and promised swift action in a speech to high-ranking generals Tuesday.

In an address at the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Virginia., Trump spoke of “the enemy from within,” and referenced cities “run by the radical left Democrats.

“What they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles. They’re very unsafe places and we’re going to straighten them out one by one,” he said.

“I told (Defense Secretary) Pete (Hegseth), we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, National Guard but military. Because we’re going into Chicago very soon.”

This week, Gov. JB Pritzker announced the Illinois National Guard had been told the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is asking the Department of Defense, renamed by Trump the Department of War, to deploy 100 troops to Illinois.

“The United States used to be a country where the president followed the Constitution, where the president believed in the rule of law,” Pritzker said Tuesday at an unrelated event.

“There’s something genuinely wrong with this man and the 25th Amendment ought to be invoked,” he said. The 25th Amendment allows for the president to be removed from office.

Trump’s remarks come amid ramped-up U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests in Chicago and the suburbs that resulted in protests. Demonstrators at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview have been met with tear gas, and federal agents had a show of force in downtown Chicago Sunday.

“This is about consolidating power into Donald Trump’s hands,” Pritzker said. “You cannot call this anything except an attack on the Constitution of the United States.”

Trump spoke of “a war from within,” and called Pritzker “an incompetent governor.”

“Last week, they had 11 people murdered, 44 people shot. They shouldn’t lose any (people). And he’s always up there saying, ‘We’re in good shape, we don’t need the military.’ They need the military desperately.”

Mayor Brandon Johnson said, “American cities are not training grounds for the military, and quite frankly, it’s appalling that he would even suggest such a thing.”

ICE contends it is targeting violent criminals but Pritzker disagreed, saying the agency’s tactics were, “‘let’s get everybody with brown skin, and we’ll just one by one go through them until we find somebody who’s done something wrong.’”