Trump cites ‘domestic terror’; Biden sees fear-mongering
KENOSHA, Wis. — President Donald Trump stood at the epicenter of the latest flare-up over racial injustice Tuesday and landed squarely on the side of law enforcement officials, blaming “domestic terror” for the violence in Kenosha, Wis.
Trump declared the violence “anti-American.”
Soon after arriving in the city, a visit made over the objections of state and local leaders, Trump toured the charred remains of a block besieged by violence and fire. With the scent of smoke still in the air, he spoke to the owners of a century-old store that had been destroyed.
“These are not acts of peaceful protest but, really, domestic terror,” the president said. And he condemned Democratic officials for not immediately accepting his offer of federal enforcement assistance, claiming, “They just don’t want us to come.”
The city has been the scene of protests since the Aug. 23 shooting of Jacob Blake, who was shot as he ignored police officers and continued to get into a car while police were trying to arrest him. Protests have been concentrated in a small area of Kenosha. While there were more than 30 fires set in the first three nights, the situation has calmed since then.
Trump’s motorcade passed throngs of demonstra
tors, some holding American flags in support of the president, others jeering while carrying signs that read Black Lives Matter. A large police presence, complete with several armored vehicles, secured the area, and barricades were set up along several of the city’s major thoroughfares to keep onlookers at a distance from the passing presidential vehicles.
A few hundred of the president’s supporters and detractors engaged in shouting matches at times.
Offering federal resources to help rebuild the city, Trump toured a high school that had been transformed into a heavily fortified law enforcement command post. He said he tried to call Blake’s mother but opted against it after the family asked that a lawyer listen in.
Trump later added he felt “terribly” for anyone who suffered a loss, and noted that the situation was “complicated” and “under investigation.” A pastor who attended Trump’s law enforcement discussion acknowledged the concerns of Black Americans.
Pressed by reporters, Trump repeatedly pivoted away from assessing any sort of structural racism in the nation or its police departments, instead blasting what he saw as anti-police rhetoric. The president predicted that chaos would descend on cities across America if voters elect Democrat Joe Biden to replace him in November.
‘POLITICAL STRATEGY’
Biden hit back, speaking to donors on a fundraising call after Trump left Kenosha.
“Donald Trump has failed to protect America. So now he’s trying to scare the hell out of America,” Biden said. “Violence isn’t a problem in Donald Trump’s eyes. It’s a political strategy.”
The election is playing out in “anxious times,” with “multiple crises,” Biden said. He included police violence in the list, along with the coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout, and said Trump refuses to address any of them honestly.
Biden said after Trump’s Wisconsin visit: “The vast majority of cops are honorable, decent and real. But the idea that he wouldn’t even acknowledge the problem — and white nationalists are raising their heads all across the country.”
Biden has assailed Trump as an instigator of the deadly protests that have sprung up on his watch. On the eve of his visit, Trump defended a teenager accused of fatally shooting two men at a demonstration in Kenosha last week, though he did not mention the young man Tuesday.
Claiming the mantle of the “law and order” Republican candidate, Trump insists that he, not Biden, is the leader best positioned to keep Americans safe. He said his appearance in Kenosha would “increase enthusiasm” in Wisconsin, perhaps the most hotly contested battleground state in the presidential race.
Blake’s family held a Tuesday “community celebration” at a distance from Trump’s visit.
“We don’t need more pain and division from a president set on advancing his campaign at the expense of our city,” Justin Blake, an uncle, said in a statement. “We need justice and relief for our vibrant community.”
The NAACP said Tuesday that neither candidate should visit the Wisconsin city as tension simmers. Biden’s team has considered a visit to Kenosha and had previously indicated that a trip to Wisconsin was imminent but has not offered details.
DAMAGE ESTIMATES
Protests in Kenosha began the night of Blake’s shooting, Aug. 23, and were concentrated in the blocks around the county courthouse downtown. There was an estimated $2 million in damage to city property. Mayor John An-taramian has said the city will request $30 million in aid from the state to help rebuild in the aftermath of the unrest.
The city’s public works director, Shelly Billingsley, provided the estimate to local leaders Monday night on what it would cost to replace garbage trucks, streetlights and traffic signals, among other things that were destroyed or damaged in the unrest last week.
Billingsley said the equipment was insured and that the city is working with the insurance company to log damage information, the Kenosha News reported. Some of the trucks, which had functioned as snowplow vehicles in the winter, also were destroyed.
Trump announced Tuesday that his administration was making $5 million available to the city and sending more than $42 million to the state, with most of the funding aimed at bolstering law enforcement, he said.
The violence reached its peak the night of Aug. 25, two days after Blake was shot, when police said the 17-yearold armed with an illegal semi-automatic rifle shot and killed two demonstrators in the streets. Since then marches organized both by backers of police and Blake’s family have all been peaceful with no vandalism or destruction to public property.
On Fox’s Laura Ingraham’s show, Trump addressed the police shooting of Blake. Although the president broadly praised police, he cast the officer in the police shooting of Blake, a 29-year-old Black man who was shot a number of times in the back, as a “bad apple” who made a poor decision under pressure — comparing his failure to that of a golfer.
“Shooting the guy in the back many times, I mean, couldn’t you have done something different? Couldn’t you have wrestled him?” Trump said. “But they choke. Just like in a golf tournament. They miss a 3-foot putt.”
“You’re not comparing it to golf, because that’s what the media will say,” Ingraham interjected.
“I’m saying people choke,” Trump responded. “People choke.”
‘DARK SHADOWS’
The exchange prompted swift backlash late Monday, with many Democrats balking at the comparison.
“You know things are bad when Laura Ingraham has to save President Trump from saying stupid things,” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., tweeted.
Trump on Monday night also claimed in the interview that “people that are in the dark shadows” are “controlling the streets” and manipulating Biden to sow chaos.
When Ingraham suggested the claim “sounds like conspiracy theory,” Trump doubled down, and told of a plane that allegedly flew from an unnamed city to Washington, D.C., this weekend loaded with “thugs wearing these dark uniforms, black uniforms, with gear.”
The president declined to elaborate to Ingraham, saying the case was “under investigation,” and the White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment late on Monday.
The exchange with Ingraham began with Trump suggesting Biden “doesn’t control anything.”
This weekend, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., similarly suggested on Fox News that the protesters who surrounded and heckled him as he left the Republican National Convention last week had been paid to go to D.C. as part of alleged “interstate criminal traffic being paid for across state lines.”
Biden, all the while, has tried to refocus the race on Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has left more than 180,000 Americans dead.
Biden’s wife, Jill, on Tuesday kicked off a multiweek, 10-city tour of schools disrupted by the pandemic in eight battleground states, drawing a direct line from the empty classrooms to what Biden’s campaign calls the administration’s failures combating the pandemic.
During her tour of a Wilmington, Del., school, she spoke with teachers and administrators about doubts that in-person learning will actually resume anytime soon and the challenges — including obtaining new small desks and protective equipment to make sure classrooms can handle social distancing — if they do. She said feelings about heading back to school “have turned from excitement into anxiety, and the playgrounds are still.”