President Donald Trump lashed out at Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler on Twitter Sunday afternoon as he blamed the president for perpetuating violence among his supporters.
After Wheeler delivered a merciless takedown of Trump's support of white supremacists and attacks on progressives, which he believes encouraged the shooting of a protester in Portland Saturday night, Trump turned to attack.
"Ted Wheeler, the wacky Radical Left Do Nothing Democrat Mayor (sic) of Portland, who has watched great death and destruction of his City (sic) during his tenure, thinks this lawless situation should go on forever," tweeted the president. "Wrong! Portland will never recover with a fool for a Mayor... He tried mixing with the Agitators and Anarchists and they mocked him. He would like to blame me and the Federal Government for going in, but he hasn’t seen anything yet. We have only been there with a small group to defend our U.S. Courthouse, because he couldn’t do it....The people of Portland, like all other cities & parts of our great Country, want Law & Order. The Radical Left Democrat Mayors, like the dummy running Portland, or the guy right now in his basement unwilling to lead or even speak out against crime, will never be able to do it!"
Trump was presumably attacking former Vice President Joe Biden, who released a statement about the violence about an hour prior to the president's tweets.
By May 2020, there have been at least 54 times in which the president has encouraged violence, threats and assaults. Many believe that Trump is doing so because if he stokes violence he can then claim that without him the violence will continue.
As conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin explained: "Trump is intentionally fomenting racial violence as a means of whipping up his base, a segment of which has always been motivated by white grievance. Whenever Trump is in trouble, he has resorted to xenophobia (e.g., hollering about the caravans ahead of the midterms) and racism (e.g., responding to a question about COVID-19 from an Asian American reporter with 'Go ask China')."
The Washington Post reported in May Trump attacked the protests against the George Floyd slaying that the president attacked protesters as "THUGS" while suggesting, "military intervention and warning in a tweet that there could be additional violence if the chaos continued."
"When the looting starts, the shooting starts," the president wrote.
"Just a day after a plainly unconstitutional executive order seeking to punish Twitter for not censoring users to his liking, Trump’s tweet was tagged by Twitter ('This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence'), which limited access. The White House then republished the violence-glorification on its official website," the report explained.