Months after first offering to swoop into Chicago and fix its crime problem, Trump is still waiting for the invitation. So naturally, he took the argument back to Truth Social at 3:45 a.m.
“Chicago violence is unchecked and at record levels. It has never been worse! This weekend 41 people were shot, 3 DEAD. These numbers are becoming normalized. It is out of control,” he wrote, before framing federal intervention as the only real fix. “The city will die if the Federal Government, a fine-tuned crime-fighting machine, is not invited in, by the Mayor or Governor, to HELP. I am awaiting the call. Nobody should be forced to live under these conditions. Like D.C. and others, they will have almost no crime, FAST! The State and City can’t do what I do. Governor Pritzker, CALL!!!”
Trump Post:
Chicago violence is unchecked and at record levels. It has never been worse! This weekend 41 people were shot, 3 DEAD.In August ALONE in ChiraQ
Final August Totals
Shot & Killed: 34
Shot & Wounded: 168
Total Shot: 202
Total Homicides: 39Someone is Killed EVERY 19… pic.twitter.com/QyJM2FVT0i
— Average Joe Patriot 1776 (@AJPArmy) September 1, 2026
The late-night appeal came less than a day after Trump had appeared to nod off during a Monday Oval Office event with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, which had been called to promote administration healthcare policy. Cameras caught his eyes closed for stretches throughout the event, including one that lasted more than 20 seconds.
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And if the message sounded familiar, that’s because it was.
Trump made almost the same request in June after a weekend that left 39 people injured and four dead in Chicago shootings. “Why isn’t Governor Pritzker calling me for help? I could make Chicago a safe city in ONE MONTH. In ONE YEAR, it would be one of the safest!!!”
He has made the same pitch to reporters, too. While aboard Air Force One in October, Trump said he could replicate his D.C. National Guard deployment “on a larger scale in Chicago. And Pritzker should ask me to do it.”
There is one inconvenient detail attached to that boast, however.
Independent research on the D.C. deployment found that it reduced property crimes such as theft and vandalism, but found no measurable drop in violent crime, including murder, assault or rape.
Pritzker’s response hasn’t changed much either.
“This is the president that thought that he could hire an unqualified company to paint the Reflecting Pool, and then thought that it would just be free of algae,” he said in June. “This is the same president that did not know that the Strait of Hormuz could be closed, shuttered essentially, by Iran if he went to war with Iran.” He kept going from there. “I don’t think that we should be listening to this president about promises that he makes or that he has any idea how to protect us in the state of Illinois.”
A Daily Beast analysis found Trump could have gotten a full night’s sleep on only five days in April, and Tuesday’s timestamp fits squarely inside that pattern. His last post before the Pritzker message had gone up five hours earlier, sharing a photo of golfer Scottie Scheffler with Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt.
Featured image via X screengrab
