Twenty minutes after he was supposed to begin a hastily-called news conference President Donald Trump posted two tweets falsely characterizing his earlier threats to have protestors shot.
Around 1 AM ET Trump posted two tweets, calling people protesting the police killing of a Black man, George Floyd, “thugs,” and threatening to “send in the National Guard” to “get the job done right.” He also threatened state and local officials if they did not “assume control” he would, by using “the Military.”
In the most disturbing portion of his tweets Trump threatened to shoot the protestors: “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
That phrase is a direct quote harkening back to a 1960’s Miami mayor who threatened to “use shotguns, dogs, and a stepped-up ‘stop-and-frisk’ policy” in what he described as a “war” against “young hoodlums,” according to The New York Times archives dug up by Raw Story.
But Friday afternoon Trump tried to walk back those incendiary remarks, which were so divisive Twitter hid them from view for “glorifying violence.”
“Looting leads to shooting,” Trump tweeted, “and that’s why a man was shot and killed in Minneapolis on Wednesday night – or look at what just happened in Louisville with 7 people shot. I don’t want this to happen, and that’s what the expression put out last night means,” he insisted, despite threatening to use the “Military” and call in the National Guard.
“It was spoken as a fact,” Trump now claimed, “not as a statement.”
He then tried to blame, wrongly, social media users for misinterpreting his dangerous and caustic comments.
“It’s very simple, nobody should have any problem with this other than the haters, and those looking to cause trouble on social media. Honor the memory of George Floyd!”
Trump finally began his press conference just before 3 PM. In a rare move he took no questions, read a speech about pulling the U.S. out of the World Health Organization, and left.
A few responses: