Trump says ‘far-left’ to blame for violence
KENOSHA, Wis. — President Donald Trump on Tuesday inserted himself into a city on edge after the police shooting of an unarmed Black man, using a trip here to highlight his lawand-order message and press what he and his campaign advisers view as a political advantage against Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Unwelcome by local officials — including the city’s Democratic mayor and the state’s Democratic governor — but hailed by others, Trump and an entourage that included Attorney General William Barr descended on the city for a campaignstyle journey to visit businesses and properties destroyed in rioting and to meet with law enforcement officials.
At an event focused on com
munity safety near the end of his visit, Trump said Kenosha had “been ravaged by anti-police and anti-American riots” and vowed to stand firmly with law enforcement.
“To stop the political violence, we must also confront the radical ideology that includes this violence,” Trump said. “Reckless, far-left politicians continue to push the destructive message that our nation and our law enforcement are oppressive or racist.”
Trump didn’t meet with the family of 29-year-old Jacob Blake, a Black man who was shot in the back seven times by a white police officer in Kenosha last week.
Asked whether he had anything he would like to say to Trump, Blake’s uncle Justin Blake referred to the president as “the orange man” and said he wished Black people had the same ability to go wherever they please.
“All I ask is that he keep his disrespect, his foul language far away from our family,” Justin Blake said at a block party Tuesday organized by the Blake family and activists. “We need a president that’s going to unite and take us in a different direction.
“We want the same right he’s got, and we want to be able to get our children home safely. They should be able to go anywhere they want in this nation and get home safely, and not get shot seven times.”
Trump and his team have calculated that amid the racial justice protests that have cleaved the nation after the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, he can leverage the unrest against Biden, casting himself as the stronger leader to quell the tensions.
He repeatedly has criticized Biden as not doing enough to condemn antifa — a loose network of anti-fascist groups — and tried to tie the former vice president to local officials in Democratic states and cities that have experienced protests and violence.
Biden, who didn’t directly address Trump’s visit to Kenosha, told WTVD-TV in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., that he condemned protest violence and accused Trump of trying to shirk responsibility.
“Everyone talks about this as if I’m already president,” Biden said. “The fact is, this is Donald Trump’s America. Donald Trump has done nothing more than pour gasoline on the fire. I have condemned the violence from the very beginning.”
Trump’s trip to Wisconsin — a presidential battleground that he flipped for a Republican win in his 2016 defeat of Hillary Clinton — was as much political as presidential, offering a glimpse of Trump’s strategy for defeating Biden and of his role as the leader of a divided nation.
“I don’t believe that,” Trump said when asked whether police violence against African Americans is systemic. “I think the police do an incredible job. And I think you do have some bad apples. I think you’d agree every once in a while you’ll see something.
“They call it choking, and it happens.”
Asked whether he believed systemic racism was a problem in America more broadly, he accused the reporter of quizzing him on “the opposite subject” of his interest.
“We should talk about the kind of violence that we’ve seen in Portland and here and other places — it’s tremendous violence,” Trump said. “The fact is that we’ve seen tremendous violence, and we will put it out very, very quickly if given the chance. And that’s what this is all about.”
Pressed further on the demands of peaceful protesters for “structural change,” Trump said people who aren’t protesting also want change.
“They want the law and order,” Trump said. “That’s the change they want.”
The president announced that his administration plans to provide $1 million in emergency funds for Kenosha law enforcement, $4 million to support local small businesses that were destroyed in the riots and fires, and over $42 million to buttress public safety statewide.
The money largely will come from various Justice Department funds, as well as the federal Economic Development Administration’s COVID-19 relief fund.