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President Donald Trump’s tweets that appear to urge the shooting of looters in Minneapolis have lit a fresh fire under Democrats to defeat him in November — but by then the focus could shift to other matters.
As the death of a black man, George Floyd, in police custody stokes racial tension in Minnesota and beyond, President Donald Trump reacted by writing, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Twitter Inc. TWTR, -3.19% labeled Trump’s message as having “glorified violence,” hours after the president signed an executive order aimed at social-media companies.
Read:Twitter labels Trump tweet as ‘glorifying violence.’
Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said he was “furious” that Trump was apparently “calling for violence against American citizens.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a potential running mate for Biden, tweeted that Trump was calling for violence against black Americans. “We need to vote him and his enablers out,” she wrote.
Now see:Biden says he’s ‘furious’ that Trump is ‘calling for violence against American citizens.’
University of Minnesota political scientist Larry Jacobs predicted in an interview with MarketWatch that, “by late fall, the focus will be on [COVID-19] and economy.”
Trump said Wednesday he ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Justice Department to investigate Floyd’s death.
In 2016, Trump narrowly lost Minnesota to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, and is currently lagging behind Biden in polls of the state’s voters. Trump trails Biden in recent national polls as well.
