A fatal shooting in Portland, Oregon, over the weekend led President Trump to unleash a torrent of tweets and attacks on Sunday, capping a volatile week of street violence that is becoming a major theme in the final weeks of the 2020 campaign.
On Saturday, a man affiliated with a Right-wing group was shot and killed as a large caravan of supporters of Trump drove through downtown Portland, where nightly protests have unfolded for three consecutive months. No suspect has been publicly identified and the victim’s name has not been released.
The shooting came in the same week that a 17-year-old armed with a military-style weapon was charged with homicide in connection with shootings during a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, that left two people dead and one injured.
The pro-Trump rally in Portland drew hundreds of trucks filled with supporters and adorned with Trump flags into the city. At times, Trump supporters and counterprotesters clashed in the streets, with fistfights occurring and Trump supporters shooting paintball guns from the beds of pickup trucks as protesters threw objects at them.
Trump on Sunday morning posted or reposted a barrage of tweets about the clashes in Portland, with many of them assailing the city’s Democratic mayor, Ted Wheeler.
The President retweeted a video showing his supporters shooting paintballs and using pepper spray on crowds in Portland before the fatal shooting. Trump wrote that “the big backlash going on in Portland cannot be unexpected”, a remarkable instance of a president seeming to support confrontation rather than calming a volatile situation.
The shooting immediately reverberated in a presidential campaign now entering its most intense period, and came on the heels of a Republican National Convention in which the president had sought to reframe the 2020 race as a “law and order” election.
Over the weekend, officials with Joseph R. Biden Jr’s campaign were inundated with concern and unsolicited advice from supporters and allies suggesting the need for a forceful and frontal response. Biden issued a statement on Sunday accusing Trump of “recklessly encouraging violence”, while condemning “violence unequivocally” himself.
“I condemn violence of every kind by anyone, whether on the Left or the Right,” Biden said. “And I challenge Donald Trump to do the same.”
Biden will follow up with a speech in Pittsburgh on Monday, and discussions are underway for a possible trip to Kenosha soon.
But the Biden campaign wants to avoid being drawn into a prolonged period of focus on unrest in the streets that campaign officials see as an effort by the Trump campaign to distract from the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic downturn, which has forced millions into unemployment.
At the same time, Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, on Sunday left open the potential of sending federal law enforcement to quell the unrest in Portland.
During an interview on ABC’s This Week, Wolf said “all options continue to be on the table” to deploy more federal agents to Portland despite the strong opposition of local leaders, who say such tactical teams have only heightened tensions. Wheeler, at an afternoon news conference at City Hall, said the shooting had left his heart heavy, and he denounced violence.
But he pointed to Trump’s combative and unyielding message as a generator of the nation’s escalating polarisation and violence, and he called on the President to work with him and others to help de-escalate tensions.
“Do you seriously wonder, Mr President,” he said, “why this is the first time in decades that America has seen this level of violence? It’s you who have created the hate and the division.”
He added: “We need to reset. The President needs to reset. I need to reset. This community needs to reset. And America needs to reset. And it’s going to take his leadership in the White House and it’s going to take my leadership here in City Hall to get it done.”
New York Times News Service
