President Donald Trump took zero questions from reporters Friday after three days of escalating nationwide protests over police violence and the death of George Floyd.
Later that afternoon at a roundtable on the coronavirus, Trump addressed the protests for Floyd, a Black man who pleaded “I can’t breathe” as a white police officer knelt on his neck.
He also condemned the civil unrest in Minneapolis in response to the dayslong delay in charging the officer who pinned his knee into Floyd’s neck, saying “we can’t allow” protests “to turn into anarchy and chaos” and “looters should not be allowed to drown out the voices of peaceful protesters.”
Earlier Friday, Trump had tweeted about the protests in Minneapolis, calling the largely Black protesters “thugs” and threatening them with state-sanctioned violence, adding, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
Trump later claimed to clarify his tweet, saying “looting leads to shooting,” noting there was a shooting in Minneapolis on Wednesday and seven people shot in Louisville Thursday amid protests.