On Monday, August 25, 2025, President Donald Trump said Illinois governor JB Pritzker “ought to spend more time in the gym, actually.” It’s not the first time the president has made comments like these about Pritzker’s weight. For example, in 2024, Trump said Pritzker was “too busy eating” to be an effective governor, per the Hill.
Now, Pritzker has responded to the comments by comparing Trump to a fifth grade bully — and by pointing out that Trump is not exactly super slim himself. “It takes one to know one on the weight question,” Pritzker told reporters. “And the president, of course, himself, is not in good shape. So, he ought to respond to that from me.”
Pritzker then went on to suggest that Trump uses such inflammatory language because he has the maturity of a fifth grader. “I would say also that his personal attacks on me are just evidence of a guy who’s still living in fifth grade,” the governor continued. “He’s the kind of bully that throws invectives at people — because he knows that what he’s saying is actually commentary on himself.”
Clearly, Trump is not happy with Pritzker’s stance on deploying troops in Chicago. During a speech on Monday, the Illinois governor said “what President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted,” in addition to being “un-American” and “illegal.”
This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump trying to intimidate Americans and his political rivals into submission. It will not work, and we won’t back down. pic.twitter.com/Q4lmPIv5mM
— JB Pritzker (@JBPritzker) August 27, 2025
“Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish his dissidence, and score political points,” Pritzker said. “If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is: a dangerous power grab.” Though he admitted that Chicago has crime, like any city in the U.S. does, he said “there is no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed military intervention.”
Pritzker added, “Find a family who’s enjoying today sitting on their front porch and ask if they want their neighborhoods turned into a war zone by a wannabe dictator. Ask if they’d like to pass through a checkpoint with unidentified officers in masks while taking their kids to school.”
No, Donald. You can't do whatever you want. https://t.co/T0mNU4MbTl
— JB Pritzker (@JBPritzker) August 26, 2025
On Tuesday, August 26, Trump spoke about Pritzker during a televised cabinet meeting. “You have a guy in Illinois, the governor of Illinois, saying that crime has been much better in Chicago recently and Trump is a dictator,” Trump said, per the New York Times. “Most people are saying, ‘If you call him a dictator, if he stops crime, he can be whatever he wants’ — I am not a dictator, by the way.”
Trump also said that he has “the right to do anything I want to do.” Responding to a clip of this claim on X, Pritzker wrote, “No, Donald. You can’t do whatever you want.”
