This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.For a man openly campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize, Donald Trump sure does love the rhetoric of violence.On Saturday, the president posted an image of himself as Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, the Wagner-blasting cavalry officer in Apocalypse Now. “I love the smell of deportations in the morning,” the meme said, paraphrasing the famous quote from the movie. In case the implication was unclear—little about Kilgore or Trump is subtle—the meme added, “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” The image replaced the film’s name with “Chipocalypse Now,” superimposing the city skyline on a fiery sky.An American president threatening to unleash the U.S. military on—to make war against—an American city would have seemed unthinkable very recently. Although such behavior remains appalling, it is no longer unexpected. Violent language is the mother tongue of this Trump administration.What Trump intends to do in Chicago is not clear. After deploying the National Guard to Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles—where he also dispatched Marines—Trump began talking about sending troops to other cities, including Chicago. Amid fierce pushback from state and local officials, he seemed to cool on the idea last week. He’s now trying to disavow Saturday’s threat too. Although Trump posted it to his personal account on a social network he majority-owns, he called it “fake news” yesterday: “We’re not going to war. We’re going to clean up our cities.”Even if the president doesn’t want to go to war—he did obtain five draft deferments to avoid military service during the Vietnam War—he is attracted to the swaggering machismo he associates with the word. It’s the apparent inspiration for rebranding the Defense Department (passive, reactive) to be the Department of War. He can’t legally rename it without Congress’s permission, and the cost of changing the branding could reportedly run into millions or billions of dollars. Either he means it or he’s willing to light money on fire for a symbolic stunt. Neither is good.Trump’s embrace of violent rhetoric is not new. During his first campaign, he encouraged rally attendees to beat up protesters. As president, he encouraged police to treat suspects brutally. As the runner-up in the 2020 election, he encouraged supporters to “fight like hell,” and they did, sacking the U.S. Capitol. Nevertheless, Trump has turned up the volume in his second term, with help from aides such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who, as my colleague Tom Nichols wrote last week, is obsessed with terms such as lethality and warfighters.The Wall Street Journal reported that the White House is now preparing to host a cage match for the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the martial sport that proceeds from the premise that boxing is far too refined, nuanced, and rule-bound. UFC also happens to be run by—speaking of branding stunts—a major Trump supporter, Dana White. And this morning, Trump seemed to downplay domestic violence at an event at the Museum of the Bible in Washington. “If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime,” he scoffed. (The question is personal for the president, whose first wife, Ivana Trump, reportedly once accused him of marital rape in a deposition. She later said she didn’t mean the word in a “criminal sense.” Trump denied the allegation.)In this atmosphere, no wonder that some members of the administration are nearly coming to blows with one another. According to Politico, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Bill Pulte, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, nearly threw hands at an exclusive MAGA social club in Georgetown last week. “Why the fuck are you talking to the president about me? Fuck you,” Bessent reportedly told Pulte. “I’m gonna punch you in your fucking face.” He also invited Pulte to “go outside … I’m going to fucking beat your ass.” (Bessent and Pulte declined to comment on this to Politico.) This is the same Secretary Bessent who previously dropped a series of F-bombs on Elon Musk, my colleagues Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker reported in May. Perhaps part of his success in the administration is that he’s mastered its distinctive patois.Speaking fluent violence comes with a price. During Trump’s first run for president, observers who should have known better were willing to believe that the real-estate mogul really was a peacenik. The delusion persisted in some quarters until his return to the White House this year, when he fully abandoned any claim to dovishness, aside from half-hearted attempts to end the war in Ukraine. Initially, Trump’s embrace of militarism was directed outward, in the form of semi-veiled threats of invasions to seize Greenland and the Panama Canal. Threats became action when the United States bombed Iran, to the chagrin of some America Firsters. More recently, the military attacked and destroyed a boat leaving Venezuela whose crew members the administration has said, without offering evidence, were drug smugglers.Pressed to legally justify the killing, the administration has offered little explanation. “Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,” Vice President J. D. Vance posted on X, later adding, “I don’t give a shit what you call it.” That drew a rebuke from Senator Rand Paul, the libertarian-leaning Kentucky Republican. “Did he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed without trial or representation?? What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial,” Paul posted.Implicit in Paul’s comments is the fear that brutal rhetoric and tools of repression that a government uses overseas will eventually be turned against a domestic population. This idea is called the “imperial boomerang,” and it’s attributed both to the poet-statesman Aimé Césaire and the philosopher Hannah Arendt. You don’t have to look very hard to see this happening today. For the first two decades of this century, the United States waged a “global war on terror.” Now it has withdrawn most of its troops from these conflicts and instead has held a Soviet-style military parade and deployed uniformed, armed soldiers to intimidate a District of Columbia electorate that voted overwhelmingly against Trump. Or, to choose another example: The president is taking a film that dramatized the senseless imperial violence of the Vietnam War and using it to threaten war against Chicago.Related:A brief history of Trump’s violent remarksPete Hegseth’s Department of CringeHere are three new stories from The Atlantic:The abundance delusionAnnie Lowrey: The job market is hell.Trump boxed himself in with the Epstein letter.Today’s NewsAccording to The Wall Street Journal, lawyers for Jeffrey Epstein’s estate turned over a copy of a 2003 “birthday book” to Congress that includes a sexually suggestive letter with President Donald Trump’s signature—which he has denied exists. Trump called the letter a fake and is suing the Journal for defamation over its original reporting on the letter. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on X that Trump’s legal team will continue to pursue litigation and that Trump did not draw or sign the picture. The Supreme Court lifted restrictions on immigration raids in the Los Angeles area, siding with the Trump administration and overturning a lower-court judge’s order that barred agents from considering factors such as ethnicity or speaking Spanish in deciding whom to stop and question.The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court once again to let it freeze billions in foreign aid approved by Congress, arguing that a federal judge’s order requiring $4 billion in payments by the end of the month threatens executive authority.DispatchesThe Wonder Reader: Indifference can be its own small act of defiance. Rafaela Jinich explores stories on the power of not caring.Explore all of our newsletters here.Evening ReadIllustration by The Atlantic.*The Most Difficult Position in SportsBy Seth WickershamSteve Young lifts his arm, holding an imaginary football, preparing to throw. This act—the most basic aspect of quarterbacking—has defined his life and, at times, his self-worth.Today, on an August evening, he’s standing at the front of a country-club ballroom in San Mateo, long retired. A bunch of professional-football luminaries are in attendance, including the Hall of Famer John Lynch, the former Pro Bowl quarterback and current Stanford football executive Andrew Luck, and, in the front row, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and his wife, Jane. The occasion is an event held by the Women’s Coaching Alliance, a group striving to diversify football staffs. The panel discussion topic is the state of college football. But, as always, the talk drifts toward quarterbacks, that uniquely American job with uniquely American responsibilities.Read the full article.More From The AtlanticFear of losing the midterms is driving Trump’s decisions.The deeper crime problem that the National Guard can’t solvePhotos: Sudan’s civil warJust how bad would an AI bubble be?America’s PerónCulture BreakJulian Broad / Contour / GettyReminisce. Giorgio Armani, who died last Thursday at 91, made the red carpet a fashion show, Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell writes.Read. Arundhati Roy’s new memoir explores the formidable figure who set her on a course of constant motion, Anderson Tepper writes.Play our daily crossword.Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.