"On Saturday, the president posted an image of himself as Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, the Wagner-blasting cavalry officer in Apocalypse Now. "I love the smell of deportations in the morning," the meme said, paraphrasing the famous quote from the movie. In case the implication was unclear-little about Kilgore or Trump is subtle-the meme added, "Chicago about to find out why it's called the Department of WAR." The image replaced the film's name with "Chipocalypse Now," superimposing the city skyline on a fiery sky."
"After deploying the National Guard to Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles-where he also dispatched Marines-Trump began talking about sending troops to other cities, including Chicago. Amid fierce pushback from state and local officials, he seemed to cool on the idea last week. He's now trying to disavow Saturday's threat too. Although Trump posted it to his personal account on a social network he majority-owns, he called it " fake news " yesterday: "We're not going to war. We're going to clean up our cities.""
A presidential social-media meme cast the president as Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, paraphrasing Apocalypse Now with the line, "I love the smell of deportations in the morning," and threatened Chicago as the "Department of WAR." The image and caption used militaristic, violent imagery and superimposed a fiery skyline. The president has discussed sending U.S. troops and the National Guard to cities, provoking pushback from local officials and later attempting to disavow the meme as "fake news." The president has five Vietnam-era draft deferments and displays an attraction to swaggering machismo in military language.
Read at The Atlantic
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