In September 2025, social media users began sharing a meme about Chicago deportations that they claimed U.S. President Donald Trump posted on his official Truth Social account.
According to those posts, the alleged meme depicted Trump as Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore from the movie "Apocalypse Now," with a caption that read, "I love the smell of deportations in the morning. Chicago about to find out why it's called the Department of WAR." The quote referenced Kilgore's iconic line from the film: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning."
The meme circulated online amid Trump's controversial plans to deploy National Guard troops and federal agents in Chicago as part of his administration's ongoing immigration crackdown.
"Not to sound like a crazy person, but the president declared WAR on the third largest city in the United States of America via tweet," a Threads user posted (archived) on Sept. 7.
The claim about Trump posting the meme also circulated on X and Reddit (archived here and here). Multiple Snopes readers searched our website and emailed us to find out whether the meme was authentic.
On Sept. 6, Trump did share a meme (archived) on his official Truth Social account with the caption, "I love the smell of deportations in the morning. Chicago about to find out why it's called the Department of WAR." That meme also depicted Trump as Kilgore from "Apocalypse Now," as social media users claimed, but with the movie's name changed to "Chipocalypse Now."
(@realDonaldTrump on Truth Social)
The official White House account also shared a screenshot of the post on X (archived).
Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker condemned the post on X (archived), calling Trump a "wannabe dictator." He wrote:
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.
As Trump left the White House on Sept. 7, he downplayed the post and dismissed rumors about going to war with Chicago.
"We're not going to war. We're going to clean up our cities," Trump told reporters (archived). "We're going to clean them up so they don't kill five people every weekend. That's not war. That's common sense."
During an appearance on CNN's State of the Union that same day, White House Border Czar Tom Homan also claimed Trump's words were "taken out of context." He told anchor Jake Tapper:
When I say we're going to war, we're going to war with the criminal cartels. We're going to war with illegal aliens, public safety threats that rape children, that raped citizens, that committed armed robberies, that distribute narcotics that kill Americans.
In sum, the claim that Trump shared a meme with the caption, "I love the smell of deportations in the morning. Chicago about to find out why it's called the Department of WAR," was true.