Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is defending herself against the problematic Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump after he accused her of failing to respond adequately to protests outside the White House Friday night. “On the bad side, the D.C. Mayor, @MurielBowser , who is always looking for money & help, wouldn’t let the D.C. Police get involved,” Trump said in a tweet Saturday. “‘Not their job.’ Nice!”
Bowser responded during a news conference Saturday. “No one needed to ask the Metropolitan Police Department to get involved because we were already involved,” she said. “Our police were doing their jobs from the start.”
Bowser went on to ask the nation to exercise “great restraint even while the president tries to divide us.” "Our nation is grieving the murder of George Floyd and every Black person who has been killed by an unjust and unfair system," she said. "We are grieving hundreds of years of institutional racism, systems that require Black Americans to prove our humanity just for it to be disregarded."
Derek Chauvin, a white former Minneapolis cop, kneeled on Floyd's neck for more than eight minutes while the unarmed Black man told the officer he couldn't breathe, according to multiple news outlets. Floyd, a forgery suspect, ended up dying in the incident that other officers either watched or assisted Chauvin in, viral video shows.
Bowser called for “leaders who recognize this pain and in times of great turmoil and despair, can provide us a sense of calm and a sense of hope.” “Instead what we’ve got in the last two days from the White House is the glorification of violence against American citizens,” she said.
Despite Attorney General William Barr's confidence that "justice will be served" in the "deeply disturbing" Floyd case, years of inaction on police brutality doesn't exactly instill confidence in Trump's administration, according to The New York Times. The administration has figuratively bound the hands of federal law enforcement officials looking to use court agreements to address police brutality.
“Our confidence in a federal intervention in cases like this is wholly dependent on the track record of the administration that is stepping in,” NAACP president Derrick Johnson told The New York Times. “This administration lacks credibility when it comes to addressing issues of justice, fairness and race.”
After a weekend of applauding a mass showing of police force and even threatening that dogs would be unleashed on protesters, Trump has refrained from publicly addressing the nation and instead tweeted anti-media sentiment Sunday.
“The Lamestream Media is doing everything within their power to foment hatred and anarchy,” the president tweeted. “As long as everybody understands what they are doing, that they are FAKE NEWS and truly bad people with a sick agenda, we can easily work through them to GREATNESS!”
Video after video was circulated on social media of police violently responding to protestors, bystanders, and journalists alike, but Trump failed to condemn police action on Twitter.
“Other Democrat run Cities and States should look at the total shutdown of Radical Left Anarchists in Minneapolis last night,” he tweeted. “The National Guard did a great job, and should be used in other States before it is too late!”
About 5,000 National Guard troops have been deployed in 15 states and the District of Columbia in response to protests over Floyd’s death, The Washington Post reported Sunday. It’s hard to believe the numerous nonviolent protestors, journalists, and bystanders already targeted by police with tear gas, rubber bullets, and pepper spray would consider National Guard involvement a positive response.
MSNBC journalist Ali Velshi described on camera the violence he was subjected to in Minneapolis at the hands of authorities. "We yelled, 'We're media,'” he said. “They responded, 'We don't care!' and they opened fire a second time."
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