JB Pritzker calls Trump 'arrogant little man and wannabe dictator' over threat to send troops to Chicago
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS: Illinois Governor JB Pritzker ripped into President Donald Trump on Monday, August 25, calling him a “wannabe dictator” and an “arrogant little man” after Trump floated the idea of sending National Guard troops to patrol Chicago’s streets.
The Democrat governor, who’s eyeing a 2028 White House run, mocked the president’s call to deploy troops in major US cities.
“Look around you right now. Does this look like an emergency? Find a family who's enjoying today, sitting on their front porch, and ask if they want their neighborhoods turned into a war zone by a wannabe dictator,” Pritzker said during a downtown Chicago speech.
Donald Trump’s troop talk
Trump has already sent Guard troops into Washington earlier this month, saying he’d love to do the same in Chicago, Baltimore, and New York.
Back in June, Trump federalized California’s National Guard without Gov. Gavin Newsom’s blessing to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles.
On Monday, Trump doubled down and signed an executive order directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “designate an appropriate number of each State's trained National Guard members to be reasonably available for rapid mobilization” and build a permanent quick reaction force “available for rapid nationwide deployment.”
Vice President JD Vance, who was grinning at the Oval Office signing ceremony, said Democrats were more furious about Trump’s help than about actual crime.
“It shows a real sickness in the head. … I hope these governors take [Trump] up on the offer, because we should clean up all of America's streets. It's the right of every American to live in safety and comfort in their community, and we've got the people to do it,” Vance asserted.
JB Pritzker fires back
JB Pritzker wasn’t having it. He acknowledged that Chicago has crime issues. “Not one person here today will claim we have solved all crime in Chicago, nor can that be said of any major American metro area," he admitted, but insisted that unleashing troops on city streets is reckless.
“But calling the military into a US city to invade our streets and neighborhoods and disrupt the lives of everyday people is an extraordinary action, and it should require extraordinary justification,” he said.
Pritzker noted that 13 of the 20 cities with the highest homicide rates in the nation are in states led by Republican governors and that Chicago is not among them. However, all the mayors of those 20 cities, barring two, are Democrats. Dallas' Eric Johnson is a Republican, and Detroit's Mike Duggan is an independent (albeit he was elected as a Democrat).
Furthermore, Chicago ranks as the seventh-worst city with a homicide rate of 28.7 per 100,000 residents in 2025. Wirepoints reported in March that Chicago has topped the nation in raw homicides for 13 years running, with 573 killings in 2024.
Regardless, Pritzker wouldn't get off his high horse. “To the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme, to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man, to any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous: We are watching and we are taking names," he snarked.
"What Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American," he said.
White House responds
The Trump camp wasted no time returning fire. White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson dismissed JB Pritzker’s outrage.
“If these Democrats spent half as much time addressing crime in their cities as they did going on cable news to complain about President Trump, their residents would be a lot safer," she told Newsmax.
