President Donald Trump would like Americans to think that he’s actually a great leader who’s deeply concerned about America — or something. In reality, he’s a raging racist who puts his nonsense on display on a routine basis. This Friday afternoon, he rushed to Twitter to try and clean up comments that he’d made hours earlier in which he appeared to advocate for violence against demonstrators in Minneapolis, who have turned out in protest of the police murder of local black man George Floyd. Trump had originally tweeted “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” — which is the exact phrase used by a Miami police chief who prominently terrorized a local black community in the 60s.
In his tweet about the protests over George Floyd's death, President Trump quoted a Miami police chief from the 1960s who sent shotgun-toting police with dogs to patrol black neighborhoods https://t.co/crZ2WTsnyK
— NYT National News (@NYTNational) May 29, 2020
But Trump wants us to think all is fine and dandy. He tweeted:
‘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. I don’t want this to happen, and that’s what the expression put out last night means. 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.’
….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!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2020
“It was spoken as a fact, not as a statement” is not how normal people use words. What does that even mean? That there’s some kind of grand inevitability to the violence that Trump was advocating for, as if it was a “fact” as opposed to a threat? The “shooting” that Trump spoke of as coming soon is inescapably violent. Shooting is not an ambiguous concept. If he didn’t want the violence in Minneapolis to unfold — then why didn’t he just say that? Why does he have to jump through these ridiculously contorted rhetorical gymnastic hoops on a daily basis?
Even apart from his inane attempt to turn that particular “looting leads to shooting” phrase around, what exactly does he mean to have implied by threatening to send in the military to take control of the city? There’s another, separate unambiguous threat of violence against protesters right there.
It's about time this warning was attached to his Tweets.
And he can stay the heck out of Minnesota. https://t.co/75yiGddiUa— Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) May 29, 2020
Check out Twitter’s response below: