Trump walks back his incendiary Minneapolis ‘thugs’ post

President Donald Trump spent Friday walking back his post-midnight “thugs” tweet about Minneapolis protesters that added to outrage over the authorities killing of a black man.

Trump’s later repeated condemnation of the killing and outreach to the man’s family was a marked change in tone from his earlier comments that also invoked a civil-rights-era phrase fraught with racist overtones.

“When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” Trump wrote in a tweet that was quickly flagged by Twitter as violating rules against “glorifying violence.” Trump later said his comments had been misconstrued. “Frankly it means when there’s looting, persons get shot plus they die,” he said.

Trump’s whiplash comments came after protesters torched a Minneapolis police station on Thursday night, capping three days of searing demonstrations over the death of George Floyd, who was simply captured on video pleading for air as a white officer knelt on his neck for over eight minutes.

Plus they underscored Trump’s complicated relationship with race as he tries to maintain a law-and-order mantle while seeking to appeal to black voters during an election year. They also highlighted his refusal in order to avoid controversy or cede the spotlight even while the battered nation tries to create sense of another killing and reels over the mounting COVID-19 death toll.

Trump, in his tweets, borrowed a phrase once employed by former Miami Police Chief Walter Headley in a 1967 speech outlining his department’s efforts to “combat young hoodlums who've taken good thing about the civil rights campaign.” In the speech, Headley said his department have been successful “because I’ve let the word filter down that whenever the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

“We don’t mind being accused of police brutality,” he said in the same speech, according to news reports from enough time.

Trump, after hours of backlash, said Friday evening that he was unacquainted with the origins of the phrase. “But I’ve heard it for a long time, as a lot of people have. And frankly this means when there’s looting, people get shot plus they die,” he said.

Trump also revealed that he had experienced touch with Floyd’s family as he continued to denounce the circumstances of the man’s killing, which he called “an awful insult to police also to policemen.”

“I simply expressed my sorrow,” Trump told reporters. “He was in tremendous pain, obviously, and couldn’t breathe. And it had been very obvious to anybody that watched it.”

Still, Trump called on protesters to keep their demonstrations peaceful.

“The family of George is eligible for justice, and the persons of Minnesota have entitlement to are in safety,” he said. “Law and order will prevail.”

Criticism of Trump's tweet have been swift, with his presumptive Democratic presidential rival Joe Biden saying it had been “no time for incendiary tweets, virtually no time to incite violence.”

“It’s not helpful,” said Minnesota’s Democratic Gov. Tim Walz. “Anything we do to add fuel to that fire is actually, really challenging.”

Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., said that, as the united states passed the grim milestone greater than 100,000 COVID-19 deaths, Trump had missed an opportunity to help the general public cope with “two viruses: One may be the coronavirus and the other may be the virus of racial animus.”

Trump has been accused of stoking racial tensions and exploiting divisions for personal gain since a long time before he ran for president, you start with the full-page ads he ran in 1989 calling for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, five teenagers of color who were wrongly convicted of assaulting a white jogger.

Trump - who rarely holds his tongue - has been silent when confronted with a long set of high-profile killings by police of black men, including Eric Garner, who was simply positioned in a chokehold and whose dying words, “I can’t breathe,” became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement. (Trump has instead invoked those words on several occasions to mock political rivals, even bringing his hands to his neck for dramatic effect.)

He spent years railing against NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick and other players for kneeling during the National Anthem to protest racial injustice and police brutality. And in a single speech he appeared to advocate rougher treatment of people in custody, speaking dismissively of the authorities practice of shielding the heads of handcuffed suspects as they are being positioned in patrol cars.

As well, Trump and his campaign have tried to create inroads with black Americans, particularly after Biden suggested the other day that black voters who support Trump “ain’t black.” A bedrock of the Democratic base, black Americans are unlikely to embrace Trump en masse, but his campaign believes even a marginal shift could make a notable difference - and send a note to white voters uneasy about the president’s charged rhetoric.

Meanwhile, the unrest complicates the Trump campaign’s plans for Minnesota, one of the key swing states he hopes to win in November.

Twitter’s decision to flag Trump’s tweet - the second time it has acted this week - came a day after he signed an executive order challenging the social media giant’s protections against lawsuits as he accuses it of stifling conservative voices. The warning label prevented the tweet from being shared or liked, though it might be viewed by users. The White House, trying to skirt the blockage, reposted the message on its own official Twitter account Friday morning. Twitter quickly flagged that tweet, too, accusing the White House of promoting violence.

Supporters of the president balked at the move.

Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale accused the media, Biden and other Democrats of “purposefully misrepresenting what the President had said, and showing once again that they are not capable of resisting their base impulse of dividing Americans, solely for the intended purpose of political gain, ratings, and cable news profit.”