Chicago

Trump: “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR”

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Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

Heather Cox Richardson

September 6, 2025

Today the social media account of President Donald J. Trump posted an AI-generated image of Trump as if he were Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore from the 1979 film Apocalypse Now in front of the Chicago skyline with military helicopters and flames and the caption “Chipocalypse Now.” Kilgore loved the war in Vietnam in which he was engaged; his most famous line was “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”

Over the image, Trump’s social media post read: “‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning…’ Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” The words were followed by three helicopter emojis, symbols the right wing uses to represent former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s goons’ disappearing political opponents by pushing them out of helicopters.

Although it has become trite to speculate about what Republicans would say if a Democratic president engaged in the behavior Trump exhibits daily, this open attack of the president on an American city is a new level of unhinged. Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo wrote: “The president of the United States just declared war, actual military war, not a metaphorical one, on a major American city, and one governed by his political opponents.” He added, accurately: “In any other period, this would be impeachment-worthy.”

Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker called attention to the gravity of Trump’s post: “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. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.” Under the words “Know your rights, Illinois,” and “Stay safe and stay informed,” the governor’s social media account posted information about Americans’ rights in both English and Spanish.

Trump’s threats against American citizens are outrageous, but they also feel desperate. Trump’s popularity is tanking, the economy is faltering, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is facing a chorus of calls to resign or be fired, and the American people are taking to the streets. Thousands of people turned out today in Washington, D.C., for the “We Are All D.C.” march to protest the presence of troops in the city, and in Chicago for the “Chicago Says No Trump No Troops” protest. The protests are notable for the seas of signs the peaceful protesters carry.

And then, with Congress back in session, there is the resurgence of the issue of Trump’s appearance in the Epstein files. Last week, the White House warned Republicans that voting to release the Epstein files “would be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration.” Yesterday, Trump reiterated his claim that the agitation for the release of the files is a “Democrat HOAX…in order to deflect and distract from the great success of a Republican President.”

Also yesterday, lawyers for the Justice Department asked a federal judge to keep the names of two associates who received large payments from Epstein in 2018 secret. Days before the payments, the Miami Herald had started to examine the sweetheart deal Epstein got in 2008. One associate received a payment of $100,000, and the second received $250,000. As part of his plea deal, Tom Winter of NBC News reports, Epstein got a guarantee that the associates would not be prosecuted.

Last night, Trump hosted the inaugural dinner of what the White House is calling the “Rose Garden Club” in the newly-paved White House Rose Garden, telling those assembled that they were there because they are loyal to the president. “You’re the ones that I never had to call at 4:00 in the morning,” Trump told them. “You are the ones that have been my friends, and you know what I’m talking about.”

Yesterday, talking to reporters about the Epstein files, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said that Trump was “an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down.” The idea that Trump was secretly working to bring Epstein down is common fare among conspiracy theorists, but as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo suggests, Johnson’s embrace of it might well be an attempt to spin material in the files before it becomes public.

Marshall notes that journalist Michael Wolff, who interviewed Epstein at length during Trump’s first presidency, says that Epstein suspected it was Trump who told the authorities about his systemic sexual assault of girls. But if so, Marshall explains, this is damning rather than exonerating.

It’s pretty well known that Trump and Epstein had a falling out in 2004 after Trump went behind Epstein’s back to buy an estate in South Florida that Epstein wanted. But at the time, Trump was headed toward bankruptcy, and it was not clear where he was getting the money to buy the estate.

Marshall calls attention to a recent interview in which Wolff said that Epstein suspected Trump was laundering money for a Russian oligarch—and indeed, Trump did flip the property to a Russian oligarch for a profit of more than $50 million a few years after buying it—and threatened to sue Trump, bringing the money laundering to light. At that point, the Epstein investigation began.

According to Wolff, Epstein believed Trump had notified the police about what was going on at Epstein’s house, which he knew because he was a frequent visitor. Marshall speculates that Johnson mentioned that Trump was an informant because that information could well be in the files the Department of Justice has, and they’re trying to spin it ahead of time to make it sound like Trump was a hero.

But both Wolff and Marshall note that if indeed Trump turned the FBI onto Epstein, it shows he knew what was taking place at Epstein’s properties.

Johnson’s claim that Trump was an FBI informant suggests Trump’s team is worried that as more and more people get access to the files, it will be increasingly difficult to hide what’s in them. Trump’s demand for Republicans’ loyalty suggests that at least some of them are starting to recalculate it. And that, in turn, might have something to do with why he is putting troops in the streets.

How The 1968 Democratic Convention Almost Sank ‘Medium Cool’

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‘Medium Cool’ won ardent support from critics and (briefly) ticket buyers but almost never saw the light of day at all, Peter Bart writes.

By Peter Bart | August 22, 2024

“I directed the best political movie never released.”

Filmmaker Haskell Wexler thus described Medium Cool, his violent feature set during Chicago’s riotous 1968 Democratic National Convention. His movie opened (sort of) exactly 55 years ago this week.

The Paramount release won ardent support from critics and (briefly) from ticket buyers but was renounced by leaders of the Democratic Party and the Chicago police. Their criticism was short-lived because the negative would quickly disappear. A Paramount spokesman was reluctant to confirm it had ever been made.

The mysteries of Medium Cool seemed relevant to cineastes this week as history threatened to repeat itself in Chicago. As in 1968, the chaos at the Democratic convention would be triggered by an overseas conflict – Gaza now, Vietnam then. But the police this week showed they’d learned from the bitter lessons of ’68 when violence jeopardized the political process and the election itself.

Despite forecasts of a turnout of 30,000 protesters and intense coverage by Fox News, the turnout was meager this week (perhaps 5,000 at most) as were the arrest totals. The convention itself won applause and strong ratings for its electric energy and star power.

But not in 1968.

Medium Cool was in fact a love story about a photojournalist who fell in love with a war widow, their affair disrupted by political violence – as was the movie itself.

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Flashback 1997: The Mekons hit the road and the road hits back

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Left to Right: Tom, Jon, Rico, Sarah, Sally

by Zak Mucha
December 18, 1997

In the Whirlaway Tavern, near the corner of Kedzie and Fullerton, the conversation between Sally Timms and Jon Langford keeps getting sidetracked by the American Music Awards on television. LeAnn Rimes is holding the last notes of a syrupy song with a sleepy-eyed grin.

“A 14-year-old girl,” Timms notes.

“Oh, God,” Langford groans.

Maria the bartender comes over to refill the gin and tonics. “You working hard?” she asks Langford, who says he isn’t. “What happened to my tape?”

 

Langford’s been bragging about his friend and band mate, accordion player Rico Bell, who titled a song after the bar. “Rico’s coming,” he tells her. “He’s coming next week.”

The girl on the TV screen takes a bow, and the bartender asks Sally Timms, “You like this kind of music?”

“Nah.” Timms hesitates. “Well, it’s all right.”

Timms and Langford’s band, the Mekons, has been making music for two decades, but the awards program has almost nothing to do with their careers. As a rock group they’ve won enough accolades to perform in art museums, but never enough money to keep from driving themselves from show to show in a rented van.

Right now they’re discussing Timms’s recent relocation to Chicago. Currently half the band lives here, the other half in London.

“I wouldn’t mind living in New York,” Timms says.

“You can’t afford it,” says Langford.

Timms ignores him. “Yeah, New York or Los Angeles.”

Langford begins to laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“I can’t see you in LA,” he says. “You’d need implants.”

“I have them,” she replies with a quiet indignity. “They’re just in the wrong spot.”

On television, LeAnn Rimes has been replaced by Pat Boone, dressed like an aging Tom of Finland.

“Who the hell is that?” someone across the bar asks.

During this past year–the Mekons’ 20th–the band made a short tour of Boston and New York. They arrived in New York for the opening of their art exhibit, “Mekons United,” at a SoHo gallery. When they returned to Chicago, they resumed recording their next album, tentatively titled Me. Then they kicked off the Museum of Contemporary Art’s performance season with Pussy, King of the Pirates, a theater piece based on their 1996 album with writer Kathy Acker (both the play and the record were derived from Acker’s novel of the same name).

Before that show, Langford told me Pussy reminded him of British holiday revues. “It’s like a pantomime, you know, a musical play. It’s a seasonal thing after Christmas, traditional that every town has a big pantomime.” He said the best of these shows feature a lot of shouting, audience participation, corny jokes, and cross-dressing. “We’re going to do it like a proper pantomime. I’m not quite sure how that’s done, but we’ve got the cross-dressing down.”

Diving into a project without much planning has been business as usual for the Mekons. “If we know how it will end up,” says Langford, “why bother doing it?”

The Mekons formed in May 1977, six months after the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and the Damned played at Leeds Polytechnic. Langford, Tom Greenhalgh, and the group’s other founding members were art students at Leeds University. Do-it-yourself record labels were popping up throughout England, and bands were being formed dozens at a time. One punk zine published three basic guitar chords and instructed readers to start their own groups.

The first Mekons singles–“Where Were You?” / “I’ll Have to Dance Then on My Own” and “Never Been in a Riot” / “32 Weeks, Heart and Soul”–were released on the Fast label in 1978. In May of the following year critic Mary Harron asserted that rock was the only form of music that can be done better by people who can’t play their instruments: “This idea underlay punk,” she wrote, “but the Mekons were the first to base a group on that principle alone.” When Langford says he was the band’s best musician, he’s not bragging. “‘Cause I was a horrible drummer.”

The success of the Sex Pistols convinced major record labels that there was money to be made in punk music. Virgin Records signed the Mekons, but the sales of their first album, 1979’s The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strnen (the cover depicts a chimp at a typewriter), didn’t meet Virgin’s expectations. “It got a bit nasty,” Langford says. “There was no promotion. Punk bands were disappearing under the major labels.”

“It was just these horrible gigs,” recalls Greenhalgh. “We were playing for packs of skinheads. People were getting stomped. It got ugly. After a time we didn’t want to play live anymore. Not like that.” Greenhalgh got his nose broken at a benefit show for Rock Against Racism. “I don’t know, someone came backstage and punched me in the face.”

While the Mekons were formed under the banner of punk, pinning them to one category has been nearly impossible since. Over the years they’ve played rock, pop, reggae, and country and western, making them problematic for major labels and PR departments, which favor neatly packaged commodities. In more than one account the band has been described as a socialist collective. But while politics has always been an influence, they don’t take things too seriously. They see themselves as an ensemble that’s free enough to go in several directions at once: they’ll have four singers, two guitars, an accordion, drums, violin, lute, tape loops, bass, and keyboards. They’ve always prided themselves on doing what they want–be it performing a lesbian pirate show, writing a collaborative novel, or touring only when they feel like it.

On a Wednesday morning in September, Timms is heading south in a rental van with drummer Steve Goulding.

“Are we picking up Rico?” Goulding asks.

“No, he’s just going to shag his way out to Boston. Probably get there before us.”

Rico Bell (aka Eric Bellis) is the official playboy of the Mekons. Timms and Goulding are the designated drivers.

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