President Trump unleashed a tweetstorm about Portland, Oregon, early Sunday, hours after a man was killed there during clashes between Trump supporters and Black Lives Matter demonstrators.
The president retweeted a post using a profanity to describe Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, suggesting only to “Tone down the language,” and others in which the original tweeters accused Wheeler, a Democrat, of “war crimes” and of having blood on his hands.
Posts from a right-wing journalist that claimed to have “exclusive” knowledge of the Portland incident were also retweeted by the president.
Portland has been the site of protests, often violent, for months, following the killing of George Floyd in late May.
Another string of posts from Trump late Saturday night included one in which he shared a message from the conservative broadcaster One America News that called ongoing protests against racism in the U.S. an attempted coup and aimed to “take down the president.”
Trump has ramped up the “law and order” rhetoric following the Republican National Convention, and as demonstrations in support racial justice continue across the country, including in Washington.
He addressed a Twitter message Sunday at Muriel Bowser, mayor of Washington, saying Bowser should “Clean up D.C. or the Federal Government will do it for you. Enough!!!”
A White House spokesman said late Saturday that Trump will travel to Kenosha on Tuesday, days after the Wisconsin city was rocked by protests after police were filmed shooting a Black man, Jacob Blake, in the back multiple times at close range.
Since then, two people involved in a protest over Blake’s shooting were killed and a third seriously wounded. A 17-year-old Trump supporter from Illinois, Kyle Rittenhouse, has been charged with two counts of homicide.
Trump hasn’t directly addressed the Rittenhouse incident. Talking to reporters in Texas on Saturday, Trump, he said the matter was “under investigation right now and they’ll be reporting back to me over the next 24 hours.”
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