US President Donald Trump in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Tuesday said that protests in cities across the nation were acts of “domestic terror” by violent mobs, while in Portland, Oregon, police declared a riot as Black Lives Matter groups broke windows, vandalized a business and set a fire inside the apartment building where Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler lives.
“These are not acts of peaceful protest, but really domestic terror,” Trump said after touring damaged areas of Kenosha, describing multiple nights of angry demonstrations last week that left two people dead.
Crowds lined the barricaded streets where the president’s motorcade passed, with Trump supporters on one side and Black Lives Matter protesters on the other, yelling at one another from a distance and in sometimes tense face-to-face encounters.
Photo: AP
“Thank you for saving our town,” read the sign of one supporter along the road.
“Not my president,” read another.
Under heavy security that blocked off the road, Trump visited a burnt-out store where he told the owners: “We’ll help you rebuild.”
“These gentlemen did a fantastic job,” he said, in reference to law enforcement units who quelled the violent protests.
“This is a great area, a great state,” Trump said, adding later that his administration was committing at least US$47 million to Wisconsin law enforcement, small businesses and public safety programs.
“We’ll get Kenosha back in shape,” he said.
Trump decried the “anarchy” in Democratic-led cities.
“We have to condemn the dangerous anti-police rhetoric,” he said at a command center set up in a Kenosha high school.
Wisconsin’s governor and Kenosha’s mayor, both Democrats, had urged Trump not to visit, but he ignored their pleas, while former US vice president Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, accused him of deliberately fomenting violence for political gain.
“Trump failed once again to meet the moment, refusing to utter the words that Wisconsinites and Americans across the country needed to hear today from the president: a condemnation of violence of all kinds, no matter who commits it,” the Biden campaign said in a statement after the visit. “Trump cannot bring himself to condemn violence that he himself is stoking.”
In Portland, a demonstration that began late on Monday and extended into Tuesday fell on Wheeler’s 58th birthday and featured shiny golden alphabet balloons that protesters used to spell out an expletive.
They sang on the street outside the mayor’s building, some wearing party hats, and the fire was set with a bundle of newspapers in a store housed on the ground floor of Wheeler’s building.
There were no reports of major damage or injuries from the fire.
Portland police chief Chuck Lovell denounced the vandalism and said it was an escalation of previous protester actions.
“The families that live inside have done absolutely nothing to provoke a threat to their lives. As I’ve stated repeatedly, the nightly violence is coming at increased cost,” Lovell said.
“This is impacting the safety of our entire city and urgent action is needed. Our elected officials need to do their part to draw a line in the sand and to hold people accountable. The violent behavior must end,” he said.
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