Trump is expected to meet with the law enforcement and assess the scope of destruction inflicted on the city in the course of the three days of violent protests that saw multiple businesses being looted and burned to ashes after the shooting of Jacob Blake by police last Sunday, White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere announced on Saturday.
When asked whether Trump would meet Blake’s family during his trip, Deere said that the president’s schedule is still being worked out.
Earlier on Saturday, Trump indicated that he had been considering taking a trip to the violence-beset city, without providing any details on what it could involve.
Trump, who previously took aim at what he described as a “mob rule” taking over the city during his spirited speech at the Republican National Convention, has yet to address the Blake shooting, which left the victim partially paralized, or that of protesters by 17-year-old armed vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse.
Speaking to the media on Saturday, Trump said that he would be issuing a statement on the Rittenhouse case “over the next 24 hours, 48 hours, maybe, max” after the police investigation is over.
The Rittenhouse case has sparked an intense debate as to whether the youth’s actions that saw him firing at three protesters and killing two of them could be qualified as self-defence. The teen’s supporters argue that the young vigilante, who, in his own words, took up arms to protect the city from rioters and looters, discharged his weapon while being chased and attacked by protesters, believing them to be a legitimate threat to his life.
Others believe Rittenhouse, charged with first-degree murder among on Thursday, was aiming to kill protesters without his life being in a particular danger, with Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts) going so far as to call him a “white supremacist domestic terrorist,” although all three protesters he shot were white.
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