San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
White House protesters threatened with violence
A day after claiming he didn’t mean to suggest that law enforcement officials should shoot people who were part of the unrest in Minnesota, President Donald Trump said Saturday that the Secret Service had been prepared to sic the “most vicious dogs” on protesters outside the White House gates Friday night.
“Great job last night at the White House by the U.S. @SecretService,” Trump tweeted in a string of four posts Saturday. “They were not only totally professional, but very cool. I was inside, watched every move, and couldn’t have felt more safe.”
More than 1,000 demonstrators massed along Pennsylvania Avenue, only dispersing after 3 a.m. when the Secret Service began to fire chemical agents.
Hundreds had gathered by midafternoon at the Capitol and began to stream toward the White House — a group that was young and included many college students, sweating and shouting through masks worn to protect themselves from the deadly virus still consuming the Washington region.
They tried to overcome a barrier erected on Pennsylvania Avenue, threw themselves against the riot shields of Secret Service agents and broke the window of a Secret Service vehicle. As the protesters’ ranks swelled, officers carrying batons and pepper spray began to push them back.
“The front line was replaced with fresh agents, like magic,” Trump added. “Big crowd, professionally organized, but nobody came close to breaching the fence. If they had they would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen. That’s when people would have been really badly hurt, at least.”
Trump claimed that Secret Service agents told him they were clamoring for engagement with the protesters.
“We put the young ones on the front line, sir, they love it, and good practice,” he claimed he had been told.
He also appeared to invite his own supporters to amass outside the White House on Saturday to counter the protesters, despite a ban against gatherings of more than 10 people in effect in Washington amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“Tonight, I understand, is MAGA NIGHT AT THE WHITE HOUSE???” he tweeted, using the acronym for his first campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”
Trump’s renewed threat of violence against the protesters came a day after he tweeted — and then tried to walk back — that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” in response to protests in Minneapolis against the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, at the hands of a white police officer.
Talking to reporters as he left for Florida, Trump was asked about his tweet that seemed to invite his own supporters to rally outside the White House. He distanced himself from his own statements, saying that he was merely asking a question and that he didn’t know if people were coming. He claimed not to be trying to stoke racial strife.
“By the way, they love African American people, they love black people,” Trump volunteered, unprompted, describing his own supporters, who are overwhelmingly white.
“MAGA loves the black people,” he added.
He added that he supported “the rights of peaceful protesters and we hear their pleas.
“But what we are now seeing on the streets of our cities has nothing to do with justice or peace,” Trump said. “The memory of George Floyd is now being exploited by rioters, looters and anarchists.”