A conservative podcaster has suggested that Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson should face the ‘death penalty’, accusing him of “treason against the United States” for pushing back against Donald Trump’s threats of sending in troops to the city.
After deploying the National Guard in Los Angeles in June and Washington, D.C., last month, the president has repeatedly threatened to mobilize the military in what he described this week as “the worst and most dangerous city in the world”: Chicago.
As Chicagoans brace, Johnson, a Democrat, has repeatedly stood up to Trump’s military deployment threats, telling reporters Tuesday the president wants his “own secret police force to do publicity stunts” to divert attention away from his administration’s “failures.”
Daily Wire host Matt Walsh lashed out at Johnson, accusing the mayor and other Democratic leaders of going “out of their way to make violent crime much, much worse in Chicago.”
“This is a deliberate effort that they’ve embarked on,” Walsh, a self-styled “theocratic fascist,” claimed on Wednesday’s episode of the Matt Walsh Show.
Walsh noted that the government cannot force state or local officials to enforce federal law but suggested that they “cannot interfere” or block officials from enforcing federal law.
“That is not states’ rights. That is treason,” he mistakenly claimed. The Constitution defines treason as consisting in “levying war” against the U.S. or adhering to enemies, “giving them aid and comfort.”
Nevertheless, he continued: “For that reason, Brandon Johnson should be arrested, charged with treason, convicted, and then given the requisite punishment for a capital offense.”
After his outburst, the conservative firebrand conceded that Johnson would “probably not” be executed.
Despite objections from Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, Trump said in the Oval Office on Tuesday that “we’re going in,” without specifying when.
The president had repeatedly vowed to fight violent crime in the U.S.’s third-largest city, which saw eight shooting deaths and 50 injuries over Labor Day weekend.
City data, however, shows that violent crime has sharply decreased by almost 22 percent so far this year, compared with 2024.
Chicago saw the fewest homicides in June, July and August – a total of 123 – since 1965, according to the Chicago Sun Times’ analysis of city data and historical police data.
The Trump administration had already been making plans for weeks for an immigration crackdown in Chicago involving 200 homeland security officials and the use of a naval base near the city as a staging area, according to the New York Times.
Pritzker said Wednesday that Illinois officials are hearing the National Guard will be mobilized by Friday and ready to take action on Saturday, according to CNN.
If Trump does choose to deploy troops into Chicago, Pritzker said that the state is ready to fight the effort in court.
