WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Monday sided with a 17-year-old man accused of killing two other people in protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, saying that the accused gunman was looking to escape and that he would have been killed through demonstrators if he had not opened fire.
Trump will go to Kenosha on Tuesday, the scene of protests against police brutality and racism since 29-year-old black man Jacob Blake was shot seven times through police on August 23 and paralyzed.
On the third night of protests, Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, shot 3 protesters, two of them fatally, with an attack rifle.
“He seeks to get away from them Array … And then he fell and then they attacked him very violently,” Trump said at a briefing.”I suppose I had very large Array disorders … He probably would have been killed.
Rittenhouse was charged as an adult with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder, and his attorney said he planned to plead in self-defense.
The Republican president, who has made law and order the main theme of his re-election campaign, refused to condemn the acts of violence of his supporters and denounced what riots and anarchy perpetrated through “left-wing” protesters.
Former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden, Trump’s opponent in the November 3 election, accused the president of fueling the violence with his rhetoric, while insisting that the rioters and looters be prosecuted.
“Tonight, the president refused to rebuke the violence.He would even repudiate one of his supporters on charges of murder for his attacks on others.He’s too weak, too scared by the hatred he’s woken up to put an end to it,” he added.Biden said in a statement.
Trump warned that violence would increase if Biden won and accused the former vice-president of surrendering to a left-wing crowd.”In America, we will never move on to the kingdom of the multitude, because if the multitude reigns, democracy is dead.”Trump said.
Blake’s 29-year-old shooting, in front of three of his children in Kenosha, a predominantly white town of about 100,000 others on Lake Michigan, has triggered a new wave of national protests.
The summer of protests was sparked after video footage showed a Minneapolis policeman kneeling over the neck of a black man, George Floyd, for about nine minutes.Floyd died later and the dismissed officer has been charged with murder.
White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany told reporters that Trump planned to do harm in Kenosha and meet with business owners, ignoring calls from some state and local officials to cancel the visit.
Trump said he’d be reunited with Blake’s family.
Reporting through Jeff Mason and Andrea Shalal; more reports from Susan Heavey and; Tim Ahmann; edited through Cynthia Osterman
All quotes were delayed for at least 15 minutes. See here for a complete list of operations and delays.
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