After sharing a meme appearing to threaten the city of Chicago with war, President Donald Trump has backtracked, saying he only wants “to help the people of Chicago, not hurt them.”

On Saturday morning, Trump posted to Truth Social an AI-generated meme captioned “Chipocalypse Now.” It depicts Trump sitting in front of the Chicago skyline as black helicopters fly in and fire rages behind him.

“‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning…’ Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” the meme read.

After facing criticism over what many saw as a threat to declare war on an American city, the president tried to soften his original tone.

READ MORE: Judge Rules LA Troop Use Illegal as Trump Rants Chicago Is ‘Murder Capital of the World’

“We’re not going to war. We’re going to clean up our cities,” Trump told reporters on Sunday according to WLS-TV. “We’re going to clear them up so they don’t kill every five people every weekend. That’s not war. That’s common sense.”

Monday morning, he continued to reframe his original post as an offer of help.

“6 people were murdered in Chicago this weekend, 12 others were shot, and in serious condition. This would mean that over the past number of weeks, approximately 50 people were killed, and hundreds were shot, many expected to die. Governor Pritzker just stated that he doesn’t want Federal Government HELP! WHY??? What is wrong with this guy, and the 5% in Polls Mayor. I want to help the people of Chicago, not hurt them. Only the Criminals will be hurt! We can move fast and stop this madness. The City and State have not been able to do the job. People of Illinois should band together and DEMAND PROTECTION. IT IS ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE!!! ACT NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!! Thank you for your attention to this matter,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Trump’s reference to Gov. JB Pritzker refusing help likely refers to his response to the original meme.

“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,” Pritzker tweeted Saturday.

It should be noted that though Trump has reframed his threat to Chicago, it hasn’t substantially changed. About 40 minutes before his post, he wrote another one about deploying the National Guard to Washington, DC.

“Washington, D.C. IS A SAFE ZONE IN JUST A MATTER OF WEEKS. Thank you, President Trump. Who’s Next???” Trump wrote.

Trump has repeatedly threatened to deploy federal troops to Democrat-led cities in addition to Washington. This summer he sent troops to Los Angeles to quell anti-ICE protests, an act a federal judge ruled violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which bans the use of military forces for law enforcement on American soil.

Image via Reuters

Much of President Donald Trump’s rhetoric about his on-again/off-again tariff plan is based around the idea that the U.S. is in a trade deficit with many countries around the world. But a deficit isn’t always a bad thing.

On Monday, the White House released a new statement that the U.S. and China had come to an agreement to lower tariffs. Earlier this year, Trump had proposed a 145% tariff against China, and the country retaliated with a proposed 125% tariff on U.S. goods. The new plan sees the tariffs drastically lowered to 30% on imported Chinese goods and 10% on American goods imported into China. The new deal is temporary, lasting 90 days.

“For too long, unfair trade practices and America’s massive trade deficit with China have fueled the offshoring of American jobs and the decline of our manufacturing sector,” the White House said in a statement.

READ MORE: Walz Mocks Trump Not Knowing ‘How a Tariff Works’ as Companies Ready ‘Massive’ Price Hikes

Earlier this year, Trump characterized the United States’ trade deficit with Canada as subsidizing our neighbors to the north. But a trade deficit is just a gap between the amount of goods and services exported and imported to and from a country. For example, the U.S. imports $412.7 billion of goods from Canada while exporting $349.4 billion. While that might look like a $63.3 trade deficit, that doesn’t take into account money coming in the services sector, so our trade deficit with Canada is actually $35.7 billion.

The U.S. has a trade surplus with some countries, too. Brazil buys a lot of energy resources from the U.S., according to the New York Times, but doesn’t sell nearly as many other goods and services back to the states.

The concept of trade deficits and surpluses is wholly neutral—and in fact, a trade deficit can be a good thing.

“America is getting more cheap goods, and in return it is giving foreigners financial assets: dollars issued by the Federal Reserve, bonds from the US government and American corporations, and stocks in newly created firms,” Tarek Alexander Hassan, a professor of economics at Boston University, wrote. “That is, a trade deficit can only arise if foreigners invest more in the US than Americans invest abroad.”

But, of course, sometimes trade deficits can be problematic for a country. If a country has a very large trade deficit for a long time, that can make it more susceptible to the winds of change, according to Jason Furman, who served on the White House Council of Economic Advisors during President Barack Obama’s second term. But, as Furman told NPR, that doesn’t apply to the United States.

Furman also pointed out that while tariffs can be a useful thing, Trump’s tariffs in particular are not.

“Let’s say you wanted to use trade policy to bring manufacturing jobs back. You wouldn’t do what the president just did, which is to put tariffs on all the bananas, mangoes, avocados and coffee coming into the United States. Those just aren’t things that we’re really ever going to make at enormous scale,” he said. “Moreover, the types of things that they do in Vietnam – you know, making clothing, making shoes – that’s not the jobs that we should be aspiring to have in the United States. We don’t want to give up jobs making airplanes in order to have more jobs making shoes.”

Featured image via Reuters

President Donald Trump said that the U.S. “doesn’t need anything from Canada” during a press conference on Friday—and yet, he still wants the sovereign country to become the 51st state.

Canada was mentioned during the question and answer period of his Friday morning Oval Office press conference. Answering one question, Trump claimed that the U.S. did not import anything from Canada.

“Remember with Canada, we don’t need their cars, we don’t need their lumber, we don’t need their energy. We don’t need anything from Canada. And yet it costs us $200 billion a year in subsidies to keep Canada afloat,” Trump said. “So when I say they should be a state, I mean that. I really mean that, because we can’t be expected to carry a country that is right next to us on our border. It would be a great state. It would be a cherished state.”

Trump: "We don't need anything from Canada, and yet it costs up $200b in subsidy to keep Canada afloat. So when I say they should be a state, I mean that. I really mean that … some people don't have the cards." pic.twitter.com/wGKcEdcRoT

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 21, 2025

This is inaccurate. Last year, the U.S. imported $412.7 billion of goods from Canada, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. While Canada is the largest purchaser of U.S. goods, U.S. exports were over $63 billion less than the worth of imports from the country: $349.4 billion.  Canada provides the third-largest amount of exports to the U.S., only after China and Mexico.

When it comes to the particular goods, Trump is also wrong. Fuel is the item that Canada exports the most of to the U.S., and lumber is the country’s 7th largest export to America, according to PIIE.

READ MORE: Shark Tank Star Proposes EU-Like Relationship Between U.S. and Canada, Despite Trump Backing Brexit

Likewise, Trump’s claim of subsidies is false. He’s reportedly referring to the trade deficit, which, according to CBS News, is only $35.7 billion. And a lot of that is due to the U.S.’ purchase of unrefined oil, with a Canadian economist telling CBS that minus energy, the deficit shrinks dramatically.

Trump also claimed that Canada doesn’t spend money on its military, instead depending on the U.S. for protection. In fact, though America spends more on its military than any other country, Canada is the 16th-highest spender on military expenses, spending $27.2 billion, or 1.3% of its GDP. Comparatively, the U.S. spends $916 billion, or 3.4% of the GDP.

During the press conference, Fox reporter Peter Doocy asked Trump if he was concerned that should Canada become a state, that it would be “very, very big and very very blue.” Trump dismissed these claims, calling the border “an artificial line that was drawn in the sand—or in the ice.”

“You add that to this country, what a beautiful landmass, the most beautiful landmass anywhere in the world, and it was just cut off for whatever reason,” he continued.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1903116806589649228

The border—the 49th Parallel—was set in 1846 as part of the Oregon Treaty between the U.S. and Britain. The U.S. initially wanted to set the border at 54°40′, the southernmost border of Alaska. Prior to the Oregon Treaty, some Democratic expansionists at the time wanted to declare war on the British Empire if it did not give what is now British Columbia to the United States. One of the primary reasons the expansionists wanted the land is to counteract the recent acquisition of Texas, which would become a Southern, slave-owning state.

Image via Reuters