Troops put on alert for riots in 30 US cities

Protests broke out nationwide forcing many states to declare emergencies.

Two government private security officers were shot – one fatally – in Oakland, California, while at least 7,500 demonstrators took to the city’s streets. In Detroit, a 19-year-old protester was shot dead by a group of men, and police threw a 20-year-old woman to the ground in New York. Phoenix, Denver and Houston were all left vandalised as hundreds of people were arrested. President Donald Trump gloated that rioters were damaging the Atlanta headquarters of CNN – the TV news channel that he despises.

He tweeted: “In an ironic twist of fate, CNN HQ is being attacked by the very riots they promoted as noble and just. Oops.” It came just days after Twitter marked his posts as “glorifying violence” following his tweet: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts”.

In Minneapolis, CNN reporter Omar Jimenez was arrested on Friday while covering the protests. Fearing more unrest across America, Trump has instructed that soldiers in North Carolina, New York, Colorado and Kansas are ready to move. It is the first time since the 1992 Los Angeles riots such a call has been made.

The order came as the Secret Service was confronted for five hours by demonstrators at the White House as Trump sat inside. Yesterday, he tweeted the protesters “would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen”, had they breached the fence. Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has been charged with Mr Floyd’s murder, but that did not quell the anger. Chauvin was shown in footage kneeling on the 46-yearold’s neck. He and three other officers have also been sacked. The complaint against him told how the officer’s knee had been on the father-of-two’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds. For two minutes and 53 seconds of that Mr Floyd, inset, was unresponsive. Trump’s handling of the riots and

Covid-19 has left many Republican backers fearing for his re-election in the autumn.

Pop star Taylor Swift added her voice to calls for him be voted out on November 3.

She told her Twitter followers: “After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence? ‘When the looting starts the shooting starts’???”. She added: “We will vote you out in November.”