Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Monday likened President Donald Trump’s call for possible National Guard troops occupying Chicago to when the Nazi Party in Germany “tore down a constitutional republic” in the 1930s.

One day after after Pritzker said he wouldn’t rule out a presidential run in 2028, his remarks at a north suburban school district continued his war of words with Trump, who earlier in the day actually elevated Pritzker’s presidential aspirations by saying of Pritzker “maybe he has a chance” even as he insulted the Democratic governor.

Trump brought up Chicago — as well as the major Democratic cities New York and Los Angeles — as he announced he was mobilizing the District of Columbia National Guard to address crime in the nation’s capital, even though the crime rate in the city has fallen in recent years.

“If we need to, we’re going to do the same thing in Chicago, which is a disaster,” Trump said before calling Chicago’s mayor “incompetent” — without naming Mayor Brandon Johnson — and saying the same of Pritzker and then poking fun at the governor’s presidential ambitions.

“And now I understand he wants to be president. But I noticed he lost a little weight, so maybe he has a chance, you know? You never know what happens,” the president said Monday of the governor. “But Pritzker’s a gross incompetent guy.”

Pritzker’s political team didn’t miss a beat, posting on the social media site X, “Donald, thanks for the compliment!” before adding: “Let’s not lie to the public, you and I both know you have no authority to take over Chicago. By the way, where are the Epstein files?” — referring to the ongoing controversy regarding the investigative files of deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein that reportedly include Trump’s name.

At the school event in Wheeling on Monday, Pritzker said Trump “has absolutely no right and no legal ability to send troops into the city of Chicago, and so I reject that notion,” before further criticizing the president for his felony conviction last year in a hush-money case in New York, accusing him of defrauding his business partners, and saying, “He cheats at golf, too.”

“You’ve seen that he doesn’t follow the law,” Pritzker said. “I have talked about the fact that the Nazis in Germany in the ’30s tore down a constitutional republic in just 53 days. It does not take much, frankly, and we have a president who seems hell-bent on doing just that.”

Pritzker previously made a comparison between Trump’s second term and the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany. During his State of the State speech earlier this year, the governor, who is Jewish, likened the actions of Trump and his administration to the quick rise of Nazism in Germany, adding that he was “watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. … The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here.”

The back-and-forth occurred one day after Pritzker said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he “can’t rule anything out” when asked about the possibility of running for president even as he runs for a rare third term as Illinois governor. On Monday, Pritzker said he loves the job as governor and insisted the “only decision” he’s made so far about his political future is his bid for a third term as governor.

“My comments about anything else really were that I am guided to a large degree and almost everything I do in my life about what I think is best for the people of the state of Illinois, and I continue to be guided by that,” he said.

Mayor Johnson also fired back at Trump following the president’s comments about him and Chicago, accusing Trump of spreading misinformation about crime in major cities and saying that “if President Trump wants to help make Chicago safer, he can start by releasing the funds for anti-violence programs that have been critical to our work to drive down crime and violence. Sending in the (National Guard) would only serve to destabilize our city and undermine our public safety efforts.”

Earlier this summer, Trump sent troops to Los Angeles, another Democratic enclave, to crack down on some unrest that resulted from protests over federal immigration authorities trying to carry out mass deportations. But on Monday in San Francisco, a trial began to determine whether the president violated federal law by deploying the guard to L.A. without the approval of California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, another ardent Trump critic and possible 2028 presidential contender.

Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., have all seen drops in crime and violence. For example, Chicago’s 240 homicides recorded through Aug. 3 are 48% lower than the 463 slayings the city tallied during the same period four years ago, according to official Chicago Police Department statistics. Total shootings — fatal and nonfatal — have dropped by 57% compared with the same period four years ago, the statistics show.

At the event in Wheeling, Pritzker also took on Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been often accused of peddling falsehoods about immunizations. At an event encouraging students to get immunized before the school year begins, Pritzker touted the benefits of getting vaccinated during childhood against measles, whooping cough and other diseases.

“Given what’s happening at the federal government’s health department, it’s fitting that we are hosting this event as our children head back to school, because frankly some of our leaders in Washington need to head back to school to educate themselves about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines,” Pritzker said, flanked by various health and education officials in Wheeling. “We teach our kids to listen to experts rather than conspiracy theorists. The kids here are well educated so that they won’t make bad decisions in life. We hope they won’t, and they’re taught not to.

“But I hope the uneducated skeptics, like maybe a Cabinet secretary or two, are out there listening,” Pritzker said, without mentioning Kennedy by name. “So, I can offer them a quick reminder: Routine childhood vaccines are undeniably effective.”

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