No caption needed:
The phase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” came from a Southern police chief who said it in 1967 during civil rights unrest in the 1960s (excerpt below). My question is whether Trump actually came up with this to use in a tweet himself or did someone suggest it to him.
The phrase was used by Miami's police chief, Walter Headley, in 1967, when he addressed his department's "crackdown on ... slum hoodlums," according to a United Press International article from the time.
Headley, who was chief of police in Miami for 20 years, said that law enforcement was going after “young hoodlums, from 15 to 21, who have taken advantage of the civil rights campaign. ... We don't mind being accused of police brutality."
Miami hadn't faced "racial disturbances and looting," Headley added, because he let word filter down that "when the looting starts, the shooting starts."
Trump’s wanting to punish the protesters (not a MAGA hat in the group) fits with his personality. I wrote about his psychopathology yesterday and hardly anybody read that story. In fact after half a day with only two comments I changed the title to “Okay, I get it, you’re all tired of my stories about Trump’s psychopathology.”
Trump, a malignant narcissist, is instinctively malevolent but generally his language has the sophistication of a dimwitted schoolyard bully. Generally his base loves them, but they rarely make the news the way this one did.
I doubt he came up with the looting and shooting rhyme himself, though it is certainly possible he remembered the 1967 articles and the phrase stuck with him.
Two of candidates who come to mind for knowing about the phrase and suggesting he tweet it are Dan Scavino and Steve Miller. However the former was born in 1976 and the later in 1985. They would have to be students of the civil rights movement to be familiar with the phrase. Another who would be old and racist enough to remember it is Steve Bannon, though it is unclear how involved he is with the president these days.
Trump would have been about 21 at the time. Would the civil rights movement have interested him enough so he would follow the news about it? At the time this would have meant reading newspapers, magazines, and watching the network evening news?
Would he have already developed his racist mindset to have had this phrase resonate with him so he’d remember to use it in his tweet?
Of course it is possible to come up with an evocative rhyme yourself thinking it’s original even though it isn’t.
What do you think?
ADDENDUM:
I doubt Trump reads progressive websites, but if he did he’d be delighted over the coverage his violence promoting tweet received (clockwise: Politico, Slate, Salon, and Daily Beast: