President Trump
Donald John Trump: Trump rally triggers quarantine of dozens of Republican Secret Service agents: Trump needs new plan Trump faces ObamaCare court deadline as political terrain changes MORE On Thursday, he suggested that rebel protesters who disfigure or collapse monuments and statues are likely to face “retaliation,” comparing them to “terrorists.”
Trump sat down for a city council with the presenter of Fox News Sean Hannity
Sean Patrick Hannity Mark Cuban endorses Biden on Hannity: “he really wants to run a country” Fauci gives Congress COVID-19 warning Trump that he is not happy with Fox News: “He wants to be politically correct suddenly” MORE during a trip to Wisconsin. During the question-and-answer session, an attendee asked what the government was doing to “give us back our streets” amid national unrest over racial injustice and police brutality.
“Every night we will get stronger and stronger, and at some point there will be retaliation because there has to be,” Trump said. “These people are hooligans, but they are agitators, but they are actually terrorists.”
The president suggested it could be a matter of partisanship, claiming that Wisconsin would not have seen riots and a statue downed a night earlier if Republican Scott Walker had been reelected in 2018 over Governor Tony Evers (D). He urged Republicans to worry less about being “politically correct,” saying he has encouraged them to speak out against rebel protests.
Trump highlighted on Thursday a delegate from Washington DC who asked for a statue in the city of Abraham Lincoln standing on a freed slave to be removed.
Over the past month, discussion has resumed over whether to demolish statues in honor of Confederate leaders or rename military bases named after the national protests over the death of George Floyd, a man. Unarmed black man who died at the hands of Minneapolis police last month.
In recent weeks, the president learned of his opposition to removing statues of controversial figures, citing the national “heritage”.
Trump is expected to sign an executive order this week that strengthens laws to protect statues and monuments and reinforces punishments for those who vandalize them. In recent days he has stressed that those who disfigure them must serve 10 years in prison.
While several cities have announced that they will remove Confederate symbols from public spaces, some protesters have taken matters into their own hands, disfiguring or tearing down monuments, including a statue of Jefferson Davis in Richmond, Virginia.
Other statues that have also been demolished include those generally associated with racist politics and rhetoric, such as former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo and various statues of Christopher Columbus.
On Tuesday, protesters in Wisconsin, where the town hall was held, tore down two statues outside the State Capitol, including one of anti-slavery activist Hans Christian Heg, while protesters in San Francisco last week tore down a statue of the former president and general of the Union Ulises S. Grant.
Trump noted that a Democratic lawmaker was attacked by protesters during the incident, although the president suggested that “he was probably there rooting them or something like that.”
On Monday, protesters tried unsuccessfully to knock down a statue of Andrew Jackson outside the White House.
Trump told Hannity that he could see some statues being removed under appropriate circumstances.
“I can understand certain things being removed, but they should go through a process legally,” Trump said. “And then we remove it in some cases, we put it in museums or wherever they go.”
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