Trump promises jail time for ‘vandals’ who topple statues
DONALD TRUMP has threatened to enforce 10-year prison sentences for protesters who tear down statues after a monument to former US president Andrew Jackson outside the White House came under siege.
Mr Trump told reporters that he was “looking at long-term jail sentences for these vandals, these hoodlums, anarchists and agitators” as he left Washington for a trip to Arizona yesterday.
“Some people don’t like that language, but that’s what they are,” he said.
The US president added that criminal charges could be brought “retroactively” against protesters who had damaged monuments in recent weeks.
On Monday night protesters scaled the bronze statue of Jackson on horseback in Lafayette Square, just across from the White House, and attempted to topple it with ropes. Others daubed the word “killer” on the statue’s marble plinth before being driven away by police with pepper spray.
Around 100 police officers in riot gear eventually secured the figure by forming a protective ring around it.
Jackson, the seventh US president, was a slaveholder who displaced thousands of Native Americans during his 1829-1837 presidency to use their land for plantations.
The former army general was known as a populist leader whose political style Mr Trump is known to admire.
Mr Trump denounced the “disgraceful vandalism” occurring just outside his residence on Twitter, writing: “Ten years in prison under the Veterans’ Memorial Preservation Act. Beware!”
The president announced yesterday that he intended to sign an executive order to severely punish those who attempt to deface or destroy monuments.
“Last night we stopped an attack on a great monument. Numerous people are in jail and going to jail today,” he told reporters.
“They’re bad people. They don’t love our country and they’re not taking down our monuments,” he added.
Mr Jackson is just the latest figure to be targeted by protesters in cities across the US who have attempted to remove dozens of historical figures with racist or divisive backgrounds.
Activists initially focused on removing statues of Confederate generals, who fought against the abolition of slavery in the civil war, but the movement has now turned its focus on other figures, including the nation’s founders, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and even Theodore Roosevelt.