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Trump’s trip to Wisconsin, a political battleground state he narrowly won in 2016, gives him an opportunity to emphasize his police-friendly speech in a state he hopes to keep in his column in the Nov. 3 election. .
The state governor and city mayor urged Trump to stay away from Kenosha to avoid tensions and allow his citizens to recover.
But the president dismissed his appeals and chose to visit one of the troubled cities where anti-racist protesters have clashed with Trump supporters who have converged on protest sites, sometimes openly carrying weapons while vowing to protect property from looters.
A 17-year-old Trump supporter was charged with killing two people and wounding another with a semi-automatic rifle in Kenosha. Trump sided with the white teenager, who faces six criminal charges, and refused to condemn the violence by his supporters.
In Portland, Oregon, the site of three months of late-night protests that have often turned violent, a Trump supporter was shot and killed on Saturday.
“One of the reasons I’m taking the trip today and going to Wisconsin is that we’ve had great success and shut down what would now be a city, which would have been Kenosha, a city that would have been burned down by now,” Trump said. before boarding Air Force One.
The president takes credit for restoring peace to Kenosha since reinforcements from the National Guard and federal law enforcement agencies were dispatched. Although Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers summoned more National Guard troops at his own expense, Trump dispatched about 200 federal law enforcement officers.
Before his visit, Trump called the Democratic mayor of Kenosha a “fool” who defended “radical anarchists,” according to the BBC. The president said that without the help of the National Guard, the city would have “burned to the ground.”
Speaking to Fox News, Trump also compared police shooting members of the public to golfers who “drown.”
“The police are under siege. They can do 10,000 great acts, which is what they do, and a bad apple or a necklace, you know, a necklace, they drown,” he said.
“Shooting the guy in the back many times, I mean, you couldn’t have done something different. Couldn’t you have fought him? I mean, in the meantime, he could have been looking for a gun and, you know, there’s a great thing. there.
“But they drown. Like in a golf tournament. They lose a meter in height.”
The interviewer chimed in saying, “You’re not comparing it to golf. Because, of course, that’s what the media will say.”
“I’m saying people drown. People drown,” Trump responded.
Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s adviser as of Monday, said last week that the president would benefit politically from the kind of unrest that erupted in Kenosha. Trump’s “law and order” message appeals to his white supporter base.
Meanwhile, it has largely overlooked racial injuries caused by police use of force and downplayed the more than 180,000 deaths in the United States from the coronavirus pandemic.
At the Republican National Convention last week, Trump described Biden as a leader whose policies would create more chaos on the streets, trying to link Biden to vandals and violent left-wing activists.
Biden has responded by calling for the rioters and looters to be prosecuted while saying Trump himself was stoking the violence with divisive rhetoric, calling the president “too weak, too scared of the hatred he has aroused to end it.”
Peaceful protesters have complained that violent, often white, agitators have hijacked their protests with property damage.
Trump did attempt to arrange a meeting with the family of Jacob Blake, the black man partially paralyzed after a police officer shot him in the back, passing by the pastor of Blake’s mother, according to lawyers for the Blake family.
Trump said he would ultimately not meet with Blake’s relatives due to a request for a lawyer for the family to participate.
Trump’s trip has raised expectations that Biden will also visit Kenosha. Biden’s campaign has said the candidate will go to Wisconsin soon, but has not released details. Both he and his running mate, Kamala Harris, spoke with Blake’s father.
Biden leads Trump in Wisconsin, according to an average of RealClearPolitics polls.
Reuters / Newshub.
