WHITE HOUSE
Defying local leaders, Trump declares he will
still visit Kenosha
The president also attacked the mayor of Portland
after a deadly shooting in the city over the weekend.
By QUINT
FORGEY
08/31/2020
09:42 AM EDT
Updated:
08/31/2020 07:47 PM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/31/trump-defying-visit-kenosha-405944
President
Donald Trump declared Monday that he would forge ahead with plans to travel to
Kenosha, Wis., defying pleas from local leaders to stay away from the new nerve
center of America’s racial crisis.
“If I
didn’t INSIST on having the National Guard activate and go into Kenosha,
Wisconsin, there would be no Kenosha right now,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Also,
there would have been great death and injury. I want to thank Law Enforcement
and the National Guard. I will see you on Tuesday!”
The
president’s social media post comes after The Associated Press reported that
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers sent a letter to the White House on Sunday urging
Trump to reconsider his scheduled visit to Kenosha.
“I, along
with other community leaders who have reached out, are concerned about what
your presence will mean for Kenosha and our state,” Evers wrote. “I am
concerned your presence will only hinder our healing. I am concerned your
presence will only delay our work to overcome division and move forward
together.”
Kenosha
Mayor John Antaramian also said Sunday that the trip was ill-advised and that
he would have preferred for Trump “not to be coming at this point in time.”
“All
presidents are always welcome, and campaign issues are always going on,”
Antaramian told NPR. “But it would have been, I think, better had he waited for
another time to come.”
But White
House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany insisted Monday that “this president
will go to Kenosha” despite Evers and Antaramian’s requests.
“He loves
the people of Wisconsin, and he looks forward to speaking directly to them and
unifying the state,” she told Fox News.
Speaking at
a news conference on Monday, Trump likened Evers' request about his visit to
the governor's reluctance to call for federal forces in maintaining order amid
protests in the state.
"He
didn't want the National Guard, as you know,” the president said. “But I give
him credit because, ultimately, he said yes and as soon as he said yes, the
problem ended."
Trump also
contradicted the notion that his presence would exacerbate tensions in the
city, saying that it could "increase enthusiasm, and it could increase
love and respect for our country."
Trump and
his allies have sought to highlight incidents of rioting and looting that have
accompanied the city’s recent protests, which began after Jacob Blake, a
29-year-old Black man, was shot in the back seven times by a white police
officer earlier this month as he leaned into his car.
Last
Tuesday, two protesters in Kenosha were shot to death and a third was wounded
during an attack allegedly carried out by a young white man who was caught on
cellphone video opening fire in the middle of the street with a semi-automatic
rifle.
Kyle Rittenhouse,
a 17-year-old police admirer from Illinois, was arrested and charged with
first-degree intentional homicide, one count of first-degree reckless homicide,
one count of attempted first-degree intentional homicide and two counts of
first-degree reckless endangerment.
Evers
declared a state of emergency last Tuesday and announced that the National
Guard presence in Kenosha would be doubled after rioters vandalized businesses
and set fire to dozens of buildings.
Trump then
tweeted last Wednesday that he would order additional federal forces to
Kenosha, and he has subsequently taken credit for what the White House has
described as a decline in the city’s alleged lawlessness.
But the
president’s response to the nation’s racial unrest was relitigated over the
weekend, after a caravan of hundreds of Trump supporters in pickups fought
Saturday with Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland, Ore., where mass
demonstrations have occurred for more than 90 consecutive days.
In some
videos circulated on social media, pro-Trump counterprotesters could be seen
firing paintball pellets at opponents and deploying chemical irritants as
protesters threw objects at the caravan.
A man was
shot and killed Saturday night, and although it was unclear whether his
shooting was linked to the skirmishes, the victim’s hat bore the insignia of
Patriot Prayer — a far-right group whose members have previously clashed with
protesters in Portland.
Portland
Mayor Ted Wheeler used a news conference Sunday to condemn “the hate and the
division” engendered by Trump, who had called the caravan of his supporters
“GREAT PATRIOTS!” in a tweet Saturday prior to the fatal shooting.
“Do you
seriously wonder, Mr. President, why this is the first time in decades that
America has seen this level of violence?” Wheeler said, adding that Trump’s
“campaign of fear is as anti-democratic as anything you have done to create
hate and vitriol in our beautiful country.”
In a White
House news briefing Monday, McEnany defended Trump’s decision to praise the
caravan on social media.
“The
president was highlighting that these were good Americans going in to
peacefully be a part of a protest and show their voice,” she said. “And that’s
what he was noting by the tweet and highlighting the video, which he routinely
does.”
Trump has
long criticized Wheeler for not doing enough to quash Portland’s protests,
referring to the mayor as “wacky,” a “fool,” a “dummy,” and “weak and pathetic”
in tweets over the weekend.
The
president continued his attacks Monday, tweeting that “Portland is a mess” and
warning that if “this joke of a mayor doesn’t clean it up, we will go in and do
it for them!”
The three
deaths in Kenosha and Portland have now cemented the cities as flashpoints in
the final months of a White House race increasingly dominated by matters of
culture, race and law and order.
Since the
beginning of anti-racism protests that emerged in the aftermath of George Floyd’s
killing by Minneapolis police in May, Trump and Republican lawmakers have
sought to blame Democrats for episodes of violence that have accompanied some
demonstrations.
And at last
week’s Republican National Convention, Trump threatened that mob violence would
descend upon communities across the United States should Democratic
presidential nominee Joe Biden be elected in November.
Biden,
meanwhile, has accused Trump of stoking divisions among Americans and noted
that the nation’s unrest is unfolding under the incumbent president’s watch.
But in a
sign of Kenosha and Portland’s growing impact on the general election campaign,
Biden delivered a speech Monday in Pittsburgh that laid out "a core
question voters face in this election: Are you safe in Donald Trump’s America?”
“I want a
safe America," Biden said during his address. "Safe from Covid, safe
from crime and looting, safe from racially motivated violence, safe from bad
cops. And let me be crystal clear: safe from four more years of Donald Trump.”
The former
vice president addressed the accusations levied against him by the Trump
campaign and firmly condemned looting and rioting in his address.
Biden
previously said he planned to resume in-person campaigning in battleground
states, likely after Labor Day, and Trump alluded to his opponent’s seemingly
accelerated timetable Monday.
“The
Radical Left Mayors & Governors of Cities where this crazy violence is
taking place have lost control of their ‘Movement,’” he tweeted. “It wasn’t
supposed to be like this, but the Anarchists & Agitators got carried away
and don’t listen anymore — even forced Slow Joe out of basement!”
Although
Trump’s visit to Kenosha carries political risks, it does allow the president
to appear at the new focal point of America’s racial reckoning in advance of
Biden. Some Democrats had urged their party’s nominee to make his own trip to
the city in recent days.
“Here we go
again. Democrats ignoring the state of Wisconsin, as they did in 2016,” McEnany
said Monday — mocking Biden while arguing that Trump was “demonstrating his
respect for the American people by actually going to places where Americans are
hurting.”
Elaborating
on Trump’s travel, McEnany said Trump is expected Tuesday “to meet with law
enforcement to look at some of the damage from the riots” in Kenosha.
At his news
conference on Monday, Trump said he was not visiting Blake's family during his
trip to Kenosha. Blake's family asked that a lawyer be present in a meeting
with the president, Trump said, and he found such a meeting would be
"inappropriate."
Trump
campaign national press secretary Hogan Gidley said Monday the president “wants
to go” to Kenosha and “begin to work to heal what has happened there.”
But Gidley
suggested Trump’s trip would focus more on Republicans’ law-and-order rhetoric
than the city’s raw racial wounds.
“These
people are divided. They’re angry. They’re upset. They’re scared to see what
their communities have devolved into. This just anarchy cannot continue,”
Gidley told Fox News.
“And let’s
be fair,” he added. “If the president of the United States didn’t go there, the
media would all be saying, ‘Why isn’t he going to Wisconsin?’”
Former
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, also said Monday that Trump should
visit the city — but not necessarily to instill a sense of peace in the
community.
“I think
the president should absolutely go to Kenosha,” Walker told Fox Business,
“first and foremost because I think people want to thank him.”
Matthew
Choi and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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