The president’s early morning post, which came at the beginning of the fourth day of raging protests in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, earned a warning label from Twitter for violating its policies on “glorifying violence.”
But the social media platform “determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible,” and allowed users to view Trump’s tweet if they chose. Twitter’s communications team also tweeted it had “placed a public interest notice” on the post in part due to the “risk it could inspire similar actions today.”
Protests have cropped up across the country since the arrest Monday and death hours later of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, in Minneapolis. A bystander’s video of his encounter with police, which sparked national outrage, showed an officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck as he repeatedly pleads for air, eventually becomes motionless and is put onto a gurney by paramedics.
Dozens of businesses across the Twin Cities have boarded up their storefronts to prevent looting, while Minneapolis-based Target announced it was temporarily closing two dozen area stores and the city shut down nearly its entire light-rail system and all bus service through Sunday.
On Thursday night, protesters set fire to the 3rd Precinct Minneapolis police station — which covers the portion of south Minneapolis where Floyd was arrested — forcing the department to abandon the building.
On Friday evening, a group of protesters was heading along 14th Street in Washington, D.C., in the direction of the White House, according to a CNN report.
Frey, the Minneapolis mayor, announced Tuesday the firings of the four officers involved in Floyd’s arrest, and called Wednesday for criminal charges to be brought against Derek Chauvin, the officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck.
By Friday afternoon, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman announced that Chauvin had been arrested on charges of third-degree murder and manslaughter. He told reporters at a news briefing in Minneapolis his office was “in the process of continuing to review the evidence,” and revealed that “there may be subsequent charges later.”
Freeman also said the investigation was ongoing and that he anticipates charges will be brought against the other three officers involved in Floyd’s arrest, but his office “felt it appropriate to focus on the most dangerous perpetrator.”
Following Freeman’s remarks, Attorney General William Barr announced that “the Department of Justice, including the FBI, are conducting an independent investigation to determine whether any federal civil rights laws were violated” in Floyd’s case.
The department’s investigation is running “on a separate and parallel track” to the state prosecutor’s work, Barr said in a statement, and that state and federal officials “are working diligently and collaboratively to ensure that any available evidence relevant to these decisions is obtained as quickly as possible.”
Walz, the Minnesota governor, emphasized during a news briefing Friday in St. Paul that the state had taken over the law enforcement response to the protests, and acknowledged the bitter relationship between black residents of the Twin Cities and the Minneapolis Police Department.
“I understand clearly there is no trust in many of our communities,” Walz said, appealing for assistance from the community “to get the streets to a place where we can restore the justice, so that those that are expressing rage and anger and demanding justice are heard.”
Pressed for reaction on Trump’s tweets, Walz told reporters that the president’s message was “just not helpful.”
“In the moment where we’re at, in a moment that is so volatile, anything we do to add fuel to that fire is really, really challenging,” he said.
Although Walz reported he spoke with Trump by phone Thursday night and the president “pledged his support” to the state, “there is a way to do this without inflaming,” the governor said.
Frey, during a news briefing Friday in Minneapolis, said Trump “knows nothing about the strength” of the city, and rejected the president’s accusation that he was a “very weak” mayor.
“Weakness is refusing to take responsibility for your own actions. Weakness is pointing your finger at somebody else during a time of crisis,” he said, adding: “We are strong as hell. Is this a difficult time period? Yes. But you better be damn sure that we’re going to get through this.”
After facing a day of intense criticism for his morning rhetoric, Trump did appear eager to justify his prior statements on the protests in a pair of tweets posted Friday afternoon.
“Looting leads to shooting, and that’s why a man was shot and killed in Minneapolis on Wednesday night – or look at what just happened in Louisville with 7 people shot,” he wrote.
A man was shot to death Wednesday in Minneapolis amid the violence in the city, and gunfire wounded at least seven people Thursday in Louisville, Kentucky, during a protest against the fatal police shooting of a 26-year-old black woman, Breonna Taylor, in March.
“I don’t want this to happen, and that’s what the expression put out last night means,” Trump continued Friday, attempting to explain his earlier tweet. “It was spoken as a fact, not as a statement. It’s very simple, nobody should have any problem with this other than the haters, and those looking to cause trouble on social media. Honor the memory of George Floyd!”
After the White House informed members of the media about a previously unscheduled news conference Friday afternoon, it was widely expected the president would address Floyd’s death, the protests in Minnesota and the subject of his own tweets.
Instead, Trump — flanked in the Rose Garden by cabinet secretaries and top aides — announced the U.S. would withdraw from the World Health Organization amid a global pandemic, and declared Hong Kong would be stripped of most of its special privileges afforded by the federal government.
He did not take any questions from reporters, and made no mention of the racial unrest racking several major American cities.
The president later addressed the unrest at the beginning of a White House meeting and said for the first time that he’d spoken to Floyd’s family.
„We think that we also have to make a statement, and it’s very important that we have peaceful protesters and support the rights for peaceful protesters,“ Trump said.
„We can’t allow a situation like happened in Minneapolis descend further into lawless anarchy and chaos,“ he continued, invoking Floyd’s family in his plea. „It’s very important, I believe, to the family, to everybody, that the memory of George Floyd be a perfect memory, let it be a perfect memory.“
Calling the moment a „horrible situation,“ Trump adopted an atypical tone of empathy.
„I understand the hurt. I understand the pain. People have really been through a lot,“ he said. „The family of George is entitled to justice, and the people of Minnesota are entitled to live in safety.“
The president’s tweets Friday regarding the events in Minneapolis represented a stark reversal from his previous tone on the matter.
On Wednesday, Trump lamented the “very sad and tragic death in Minnesota of George Floyd,” tweeting that he had requested an FBI and Justice Department investigation “to be expedited” and vowing: “Justice will be served!”
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters Thursday that the president was being briefed on the situation by the attorney general and the deputy director of the FBI, and went on to characterize Trump’s reaction to the viral video of Floyd’s arrest.
“He was very upset by it. It was egregious, appalling, tragic,” she said.
Floyd’s death came just weeks after a video of the fatal February shooting of a black man in Georgia, 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, began circulating on social media.
That footage provoked a similar uproar among Americans, and the president described it earlier this month as “very, very disturbing” to watch. He also said that “law enforcement is going to look at” the incident and predicted Gov. Brian Kemp was “going to do what’s right.”
Despite his recent comments and public calls for further investigation of the two high-profile cases, Trump’s incendiary tweets Friday could chip away at whatever gains his reelection campaign has sought to make with African-American voters ahead of November.
The president has often promoted his administration’s backing of a criminal justice bill he signed in 2018 as evidence of his commitment to the black community, and argued that Democrats take the votes of African Americans for granted.
“What the hell do you have to lose?” he controversially asked in 2016, imploring African Americans to abandon the Democratic Party and support his first White House bid.
However, Trump’s warning Friday that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” echoed a more infamous historical predicate: Miami Police Chief Walter Headley reportedly uttered the same phrase at a December 1967 news conference.
A federal task force later concluded Headley’s words had contributed to the escalated local tensions that resulted in a deadly, three-day riot the following summer, which coincided with the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach — where former Vice President Richard Nixon was nominated as the party’s candidate for president.
On Friday evening, Trump denied knowledge about the saying’s racial context. „I’ve heard that phrase for a long time,“ he told reporters at the White House. „I don’t know where it came from, where it originated.“
When a reporter began to explain its context, the president brushed it aside and said he’d heard it „from many other places.“
„I don’t know where it came from, I don’t know where it originated, I wouldn’t know a thing like that,“ he continued. „But I will say it’s very accurate in the sense that when you do have looting like you had last night, people often get shot, and they die and that’s not good and we don’t want that to happen.“
White House adviser Ivanka Trump offered a more muted assessment of the Twin Cities protests Friday, declining to mention her father’s ongoing feud with Twitter.
“People in Minneapolis are hurting for a reason. Justice is how we heal,” she tweeted. “My heart goes out to George Floyd‘s family and all Americans who are hurting.”
But former Vice President Joe Biden fiercely reprimanded Trump in a multi-post statement that recognized the on-air arrest of a CNN news crew Friday morning.
“This is not abstract: a black reporter was arrested while doing his job this morning, while the white police officer who killed George Floyd remains free. I am glad swift action was taken, but this, to me, says everything,” Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, tweeted.
“I will not lift the President’s tweet. I will not give him that amplification,” Biden continued. “But he is calling for violence against American citizens during a moment of pain for so many. I’m furious, and you should be too.”
Cristiano Lima, Caitlin Oprysko and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Source: politico.com
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