George Floyd: Trump rebuked for ‘vicious dogs’ remark after White House protest
- President celebrates Secret Service for ‘most ominous weapons’
- DC mayor Bowser laments ‘reminder of segregationists’
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Donald Trump has been rebuked by the mayor of Washington DC, for publicly raising the prospect of deploying violence against the American people for the second time in two days.
After Trump tweeted that protesters outside the White House on Friday night could have been attacked with “vicious dogs and ominous weapons” wielded by the US Secret Service, and attacked Muriel Bowser for supposedly not providing police to protect the White House, the mayor criticized the president for using the language of violent segregationists during the civil rights era.
“To make a reference to vicious dogs is no subtle reminder to African Americans of segregationists who let dogs out on women, children, and innocent people in the south,” Bowser said.
The mayor, a Democrat, said that she stood with peaceful protesters while Trump “hides behind his fence”. She added: “There are no vicious dogs & ominous weapons. There is just a scared man. Afraid/alone.”
Trump’s tweets were his latest potentially inflammatory response to protests which have erupted across the US over the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man who died while being arrested by police in Minneapolis.
A white officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck was charged with murder but violent protests have prompted national guard deployments, raising tensions everywhere.
On Friday, Trump tweeted, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts”, a phrase with racist origins which was censored by Twitter.
Trump claimed he hadn’t known the inflammatory nature of the phrase, let alone had intended to call for violence against his own citizens. He also expressed his “deepest condolences and most heartfelt sympathies to the family of George Floyd”.
Those words were more in keeping with those of Joe Biden, Trump’s presumptive opponent at the polls in November. The former vice-president spoke to Floyd’s family and issued a video address in which he said: “This is no time for incendiary tweets. This is no time to encourage violence. This is a national crisis, and we need real leadership right now.”
But on Friday night, as protests reached the White House gates, Trump turned back to incendiary tweeting.
Protesters hurled bricks, bottles and other objects at Secret Service and US park police officers in riot gear behind barricades.
The crowd of hundreds chanted “No justice, no peace” and “Say his name: George Floyd”. The protest went on for several hours before police declared it “unlawful” and ordered everyone to leave. Dozens of officers pushed forward with their shields and fired off streams of pepper spray at protesters.
In a statement on Saturday, the Secret Service said it made six arrests and “multiple” officers and agents were injured.
Trump said he watched the events from the White House and that the Secret Service did a “great job”.
The president added: “They let the ‘protesters’ scream and rant as much as they wanted, but whenever someone got too frisky or out of line, they would quickly come down on them, hard – didn’t know what hit them.”
Without evidence, the president claimed the protesters were “professionally” organized.
“If they had [breached the fence],” he said, “they would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen. That’s when people would have been really badly hurt, at least.”
Trump rounded off the flurry of tweets by attacking Bowser for not sending DC police to help. The Secret Service said DC parks police were present.
Trump has responded to the turmoil over the Floyd case by blaming riots on Democratic mayors and governors and lamenting damage caused to businesses.
On Saturday, he claimed the White House protest “had little to do with the memory of George Floyd. They were just there to cause trouble … Tonight, I understand, is MAGA NIGHT AT THE WHITE HOUSE???”
That was seemingly a call for a counter-protest by his supporters, an event which would be likely to enflame tensions already running high.
Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump, later flew to Florida for the launch of a manned SpaceX mission. Their public schedule was set to land them back to the White House at 8.15pm.
Asked about the counter-protest as he left the White House, Trump said he had no idea if his supporters would show up and added: “By the way, they love African American people, they love black people.”
Trump also denounced Jacob Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis, and criticized the abandonment of a police station in the city that was besieged by protesters. He reiterated that he was prepared to intervene, with the military if necessary.
“We have our military ready, willing and able if they ever want to call our military,” Trump said. “We can have troops on the ground very quickly.”
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The Department of Defense took the rare step of putting military police units on alert to go to Minneapolis. A source told the Associated Press that if the units were used, they would be deployed under the Insurrection Act of 1807, which was last used in 1992 during riots in Los Angeles that followed the Rodney King trial.
The Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, had not requested such assistance. On Saturday morning, he said he had ordered the largest deployment of state national guard troops since the second world war.
As Walz and other authority figures said the protests over Floyd’s death had been hijacked by other groups and actors, Trump said he wanted to use the military “because these people, this Antifa, there’s a lot of radical left bad people, and they’ve got to be taught that you can’t do this”.
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