Crackdown urged
Trump threatens to send military to stop protests
President Donald Trump, who was taken to an underground bunker Friday as protests grew heated near the White House, called governors “weak” during a teleconference Monday for failing to use sufficient force to dissolve outbursts over the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Trump reminded governors they could use the National Guard, saying putting people in jail “for 10 years” would solve disturbances. Later, Trump stood in the Rose Garden and said he would mobilize “thousands and thousands” of soldiers to keep the peace if governors could not end protests.
WASHINGTON – Amid racial unrest stemming from the death of George Floyd while in police custody, President Donald Trump on Monday declared himself “the president of law and order” and threatened to deploy the United States military to American cities to quell a rise of violent protests.
While Trump addressed the nation from the White House’s idyllic Rose Garden, military vehicles rolled onto Pennsylvania Avenue and military police and law enforcement cleared a peaceful protest from Lafayette Park.
Trump then walked across the park to St. John’s Episcopal Church, known as “The Church of the Presidents,” which suffered fire damage in a protest. Holding a Bible, he then stood with several of his Cabinet members as the cameras clicked.
Trump said he would mobilize “thousands and thousands” of soldiers to keep the peace if governors did not use the National Guard to shut down the protests.
According to senior defense officials, between 600 and 800 National Guard members from five states were being sent to Washington to provide assistance. Those troops were either already on the ground or will arrive by midnight.
Under the Civil War-era Posse Comitatus Act, federal troops are prohibited from performing domestic law enforcement actions such as making arrests, seizing property or searching people. In extreme cases, however, the president can invoke the Insurrection Act, also from the Civil War, which allows the use of active-duty or National Guard troops for law enforcement.
In Minneapolis, however, Floyd’s brother Terrence made an emotional plea at the site where Floyd died while a Minneapolis officer knelt on his neck.
“Do this peacefully, please,” Terrence Floyd said. “You all are doing nothing. Because that’s not going to bring my brother back at all.”
“You’ve got to arrest people, you have to track people, you have to put them in jail for 10 years, and you’ll never see this stuff again,” Trump said earlier. “We’re doing it in Washington, D.C. We’re going to do something that people haven’t seen before.”
The president told the governors they were making themselves “look like fools” for not calling up more of the National Guard as a show of force.
Attorney General William Barr, who was also on the call, told governors that a joint terrorist task force would be used to track agitators and urged local officials to “dominate” the streets and “go after troublemakers.”
Trump’s angry exhortations at the nation’s governors came after a night of escalating violence.
The protests grew so heated Friday night that the Secret Service rushed the president to an underground bunker previously used during terrorist attacks. Secret Service protocol would call for all those under the agency’s protection to be in the shelter.