WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump warned that protesters outside the White House Friday night could have been "greeted" with "vicious dogs" and "ominous weapons" if they had breached the fence, and praised the Secret Service for their response to the demonstrations.
"Big crowd, professionally organized, but nobody came close to breaching the fence. If they had they would....have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen. That’s when people would have been really badly hurt, at least," Trump tweeted Saturday morning.
“Great job last night at the White House by the U.S. [Secret Service]," Trump added. "I was inside, watched every move, and couldn’t have felt more safe."
Thousands of people gathered in front of the White House Friday night in protest of George Floyd's death, prompting the Secret Service to put the White House on lockdown. A woman was taken into custody after she climbed over a barrier.
Floyd, a black man, died Monday when a white Minneapolis police officer used his knee to pin Floyd down on the ground for almost nine minutes after taking him into custody. The incident was caught on multiple cameras and Floyd could be heard pleading with the officer, saying, “I can’t breathe.”
Trump said that whenever a protestor got too “frisky” the Secret Service agents would “come down on them hard” and that the agents were “just waiting for action.”
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Trump appeared to quote an agent, writing on Twitter “‘We put the young ones on the front line, sir, they love it…’”
Trump tweeted that Saturday would be "MAGA NIGHT AT THE WHITE HOUSE," but it is unclear what he was referencing.
Trump also wrote on Twitter that "It’s ANTIFA and the Radical Left. Don’t lay the blame on others!"
Antifa groups, short for anti-fascists, organized counter-protests to the deadly "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville in 2017. Trump was criticized for saying that there were "very fine people" on both sides, despite the killing of Heather Heyer by a Unite the Right participant.
Trump was asked at the White House on Friday if he was willing to say there there were "good people" protesting in Minneapolis.
"Well, certainly there were a lot of different people, and they were good people too," Trump said.
Trump has been criticized for inciting violence and shirking his responsibility as president to call for peaceful demonstrations in the aftermath of Floyd’s death.
Twitter put a tweet from Trump about the protests behind a warning label early Friday, stating that he had violated its rules against glorifying violence because of the historical context of his last line: "When the looting starts, the shooting starts."
Trump’s comments about the Floyd protesters are in stark contrast to how he has called on other world leaders to respond to civil unrest.
In January, Trump tweeted “To the leaders of Iran - DO NOT KILL YOUR PROTESTERS,” after nationwide demonstrations broke in response to a 50 percent hike in gas prices and escalated after the Iranian government admitted it shot down a passenger plane.
Trump called on President Xi Jinping of China in August to meet with protesters in Hong Kong in order to deescalate the student-led demonstrations demanding greater democracy.
“If President Xi would meet directly and personally with the protesters, there would be a happy and enlightened ending to the Hong Kong problem,” Trump tweeted, adding that he was confident Xi could “humanely” resolve the situation.
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