When Donald Trump doesn’t like a political opponent, he doesn’t just condemn them. The president also has an unfortunate habit of calling for their incarceration.
The classic example of this, of course, was the Republican’s incessant calls for Hillary Clinton to be “locked up,” but the former secretary of state has plenty of company. In June, for example, the president endorsed California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s arrest. A month later, Trump said Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff should be in “prison.”
Last month, Trump called for the incarceration of Fani Willis, a prosecutor in Georgia who tried to hold him accountable for alleged crimes after his 2020 election defeat, and this week the list grew a little longer. NBC News reported:
President Donald Trump said in a post to Truth Social on Wednesday that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker ‘should be in jail’ in an escalation of his conflict with the two Democratic officials. ‘Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers!’ he said in the post. ‘Governor Pritzker also!’
A White House spokesperson added soon after that the Democratic officials “have blood on their hands.”
As Wednesday progressed, Trump leaned into the rhetoric, adding at a White House event that Pritzker’s and Johnson’s recent efforts have been “not lawful” and constitute “criminal” offenses. The president didn’t elaborate as to what, exactly, the governor and mayor might have done, but he quickly added an ominous threat: “They have to be very careful.”
Trump: Everything we're doing is very lawful and what they're doing is not lawful. And what the governor and mayor, as an example, you can say of Portland and certainly of Chicago, it's not lawful what they're doing. They have to be very careful.
— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) 2025-10-08T19:37:21.858Z
Trump proceeded to refer to Johnson as a “low-IQ mayor” — a phrase he too often uses when referring to Black people he doesn’t like — before claiming that he’d read “in numerous journals” about the governor’s and mayor’s legal transgressions.
Because if there’s one thing this president is known for, it’s sitting down and carefully scrutinizing legal arguments presented in “numerous journals.” Joking aside, the circumstances are profoundly serious. As Trump plays a direct role in deploying out-of-state Guard troops to the Chicago area in response to a crisis that doesn’t appear to exist, the president also wants the city’s mayor and the Illinois governor to be “in jail” because of crimes that also don’t appear to exist. For his part, Pritzker did not appear intimidated. “I will not back down,” he wrote via Bluesky. “Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power. What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?” Later in the day, the governor added, “He likes to pretend to be a tough guy. Come and get me.”
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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