When President Trump delivered his inaugural address in 2017, it was in an unfamiliar style. Gone was the jokey off-handedness of Trump-on-the-trail. In a stilted, elegiac tone the freshly-minted president spoke of “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones” and “young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge.” The content of the speech was familiar, though: Trump would bring America back from the brink. “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.” President George W. Bush called it “some weird shit.”
Trump ran on law and order — “I am the law and order candidate” he helpfully explained — even if empirical evidence suggested nothing was wrong with the law and order Americans were already living under. The country’s rates of violent crime were trending downward when he ran — falling 51 percent between 1993 and 2018 — and the economy was churning along, but Trump tapped into some Americans’ dissatisfaction with the status quo. Law and order was about the restoration of a certain social configuration favorable to white Americans as much as it was a concern with crime.
As the strange election year that is 2020 marches on, Trump has returned to his 2016 rhetoric, but it may register differently. Late Thursday night, Minneapolis residents burned down a police station after the death of George Floyd, a black man in police custody. The president tweeted in response that, “These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!” Continue reading.
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA — Drifting out of the shadows in small groups, dressed in black, carrying shields and wearing knee pads, they head toward the front lines of the protest. Helmets and gas masks protect and obscure their faces, and they carry bottles of milk to counteract tear gas and pepper spray.
In cities across the country, protests turned violent as local authorities called for calm.
This has been one of the most challenging weeks in our community’s history. We know that most of you are feeling emotionally drained. We are too. But I’ll be out on the streets with my deputies tonight and every night to help keep the peace. We are working shoulder-to-shoulder with law enforcement officers from across the state and the National Guard. It’s a unified, organized front with the goal of protecting our community from a violent element bent on destruction.
As the Twin Cities enter an anxious and uncertain weekend, fired Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is in custody and accused of murder, while the three other ex-officers present at George Floyd’s fatal arrest are keeping an extremely low profile.
Local law enforcement officials are condemning the use of force by Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin, who was filmed on Memorial Day pinning a handcuffed, 46-year-old George Floyd to the ground by kneeling on his neck. Floyd died in police custody.
A former club owner in south Minneapolis says the now-fired police officer and the black man who died in his custody this week both worked security for her club up to the end of last year.
The wife of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin released a statement on Friday announcing she was seeking a divorce.