Simple provocation or threat? Donald Trump on Monday, July 20, promised to send federal law enforcement to several large cities ruled by Democrats, after controversial first deployments in Portland in the northwest of the country.
“We’re going to have more federal law enforcement agencies. In Portland they did a fantastic job, the US president told the press on the sidelines of a meeting at the White House with elected officials of Congress. In three days, they put a lot of anarchists in jail. “
Federal agents were deployed to the Oregon city last week to end protests against police violence and racism marred by violence. But local elected officials – Democrats – called for the departure of these federal forces, believing that their presence added fuel to the fire instead of solving the problems.
The situation in Chicago, “worse than in Afghanistan”
Donald Trump, who relies on his firm posture to win a second term in the presidential election on November 3, accuses these elected officials of laxity and now promises to extend the recipe to other cities. “We are not going to let down New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit and Baltimore”, he said, accusing the elected officials of these big cities of being “Radical left”.
Referring to an upsurge in shootings since the beginning of the month in Chicago, the Republican billionaire estimated that the situation in the third largest metropolis in the United States was “Worse than in Afghanistan”, a country ravaged by decades of war. What if his Democratic rival Joe Biden was elected to the White House, “It would become true for the whole country”, he said: “The country would go to hell! “
The governor of Michigan, where Detroit is located, immediately denounced “Hateful rhetoric”. “There is no reason for the president to send federal troops to a city where people are calling for reforms peacefully and respectfully”, said Gretchen Whitmer in a statement.
Since the death of George Floyd, an African-American suffocated by a white policeman on May 25 in Minneapolis, the United States has experienced a wave of protests on a scale not seen since the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Even if the mobilization is subdued, sporadic demonstrations continue in several cities and sometimes give rise to overflows.
