Trump threatens White House protesters with 'vicious dogs and most ominous weapons'
Donald Trump has threatened people protesting the death of George Floyd with "vicious dogs" and "ominous weapons" if they had breached the fence outside the White House, where members of the US Secret Service are "waiting for action" and "love"
In a Twitter thread posted after another night of protests and uprisings against police brutality across the US, the president suggested that US Secret Service members look forward to inflicting violence.
The president said: "The front line was replaced with fresh agents, like magic. Big crowd, professionally organized, but nobody came close to breaching the fence. If they had they would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen. That's when people would have been really badly hurt, at least. Many Secret Service agents just waiting for action. 'We put the young ones on the front line, sir, they love it, and ... good practice."
His posts appeared to undermine the protest's message, calling for justice in the wake of killings of black men by police, by saying that the US Secret Service (which he appraised as "not only totally professional, but very cool") had "let the 'protesters' scream [and] rant as much as they wanted" but "whenever someone got too frisky or out of line, they would quickly come down on them, hard — didn’t know what hit them."
The president doubled down on his warning that "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" — which Twitter had censored for the company's rules about messages promoting or glorifying violence — by claiming he was saying "it was spoken as a fact, not as a statement".
"It's very simple, nobody should have any problem with this other than the haters, and those looking to cause trouble on social media," he said on Friday.
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