As protests continued in Minneapolis overnight in reaction to the George Floyd killing, Trump took to Twitter to weigh in. While the President has recently thrown his support behing protesters in Hong Kong and Iran — and even heavily armed white protesters in Michigan and other states — he took a different tone with Minneapolis:
I can’t stand back & watch this happen to a great American City, Minneapolis. A total lack of leadership. Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his act together and bring the City under control, or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right.....
...These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!
As Business Insider notes: By warning that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”… “The president seemed to have been quoting Miami police chief Walter Headley, whose harsh policing of African American neighborhoods sparked three days of riots in 1968.”
The Washington Post’s Global Opinions editor Karen Attiah wrote on Twitter:
In recent days, Trump has seized on every opportunity to distract from his disastrous failure to control the coronavirus, which has now killed more than 103,000 Americans. He’s also hoping to divert attention from the news yesterday that more than 40 million have filed for unemployment in just ten weeks.
As part of his distraction campaign, Trump yesterday also signed an Executive Order “that could open the door for the U.S. government to assume oversight of political speech on the Internet.” Coming soon after Twitter fact-checked two of his false tweets, the EO is a direct attack on the First Amendment that, like most Trump nonsense, is designed more to please his base than to withstand legal scrutiny.
Overnight, Twitter’s move to limit (but not remove) Trump’s “looting and shooting” tweet for “glorifying violence” signals that CEO Jack Dorsey is, for now at least, standing firm in his position that the company will continue to enforce its policies regarding Trump tweets, even as it resists calls to ban Trump from the platform altogether.
Meanwhile, back in Minneapolis: This morning, black CNN reporter Omar Jimenez was arrested live on air.
Separately, white correspondent Josh Campbell told CNN that when he identified himself to Minneapolis Police, he was told, “you’re good to go.”
After Jimenez was released, he told CNN that one of the cops who arrested him for no apparent reason offered only the Nuremberg defense: “I’m just following orders.”
These are troubled times. And the election is still more than five months away. Things will only get worse if Orange Mussolini is re-elected. This ad-free email newsletter will continue to deliver news — and arguments — to fight back against Trump’s lies and corruption. If you’d like to sign up for future FREE updates —or support with a paid subscription—click here:
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