Unlike some other high-profile deaths of black men by white cops, the country has swiftly united in outrage against the cop who seemingly crushed George Floyd’s neck, allegedly killing him, without any legal or moral justification. President Trump rightly called on the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate Floyd’s death, and despite recalcitrance from the prosecution, it’s impossible to imagine a political reality in which the cops in question aren’t tried for murder and potentially a hate crime.

In a time when a pandemic has killed more than 100,000 people in the United States and the resulting lockdown has led to the loss of more than 30 million jobs, Trump could simply continue his early calls to condemn the killing and urge a rapid federal investigation. But amid a destructive uprising now burning parts of Minneapolis to the ground, Trump has decided to turn this into a scandal the scope and substance of which we haven’t seen since he attempted to conflate anti-racist protesters with neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia.