President Trump warned that if presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden is elected, “the whole country will be Minneapolis,” referring to the unrest that broke out after George Floyd’s death.
“I feel that if the Democrats get in, we are literally going to end up in a recession/depression the likes of which you’ve never seen,” Trump told his son Donald Trump Jr. in an interview that aired online Thursday. “It will be tremendous negative growth. There will be tremendous bedlam all over the place. There won’t be law and order. You’ll have a Seattle — you’ll have a Minneapolis like you’ve never seen before.”
The president added: “The whole country will be Minneapolis. And we saved it by me enforcing and sending the troops in.”
After violent protests broke out following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, Trump called on Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey to “get his act together and bring the City under control,” or he would “get the job done right” by sending in the National Guard.
“Any difficulty, and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” Trump wrote in another tweet.
In Seattle, demonstrators established a six-block police-free “autonomous zone” dubbed “CHAZ” or “CHOP” in response to the protests around the country sparked by Floyd’s death. Trump blasted Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan on Twitter for allowing “terrorists” to “burn and pillage” the city.
Calls to address police brutality and racial injustice have been taken up by lawmakers, as well as by the White House, with the president signing an executive order on police reform this week.
Despite Trump’s charge against Biden, polls show him slipping in head-to-head surveys.
A Fox News poll published Thursday showed former Vice President Joe Biden with a 12-point lead over Trump, up from 8 points one month earlier.
In a bid to relaunch his reelection campaign, Trump is holding his first rally since March 2 on Saturday, returning to the original “Make America Great Again” slogan for an event in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
