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Donald Trump Appears To Call For Violence Against Minnesota Protesters In Loaded 'Thugs' Tweet

Donald Trump's looting shooting tweet has been censored a bit by Twitter amid the Minneapolis police brutality riots

It’s one thing to see Donald Trump up all night tweeting meaningless blabber about his favorite shows on Fox News.

But when the President of the United States uses his official account and high-profile online voice to call for violence, that’s when things get COMPLETELY out of hand. Trump appears to have done just that overnight — at least according to Twitter, as the social media platform affixed a warning label to one of his tweets and informed its users that the message “violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence.”

Related: Black CNN Reporter Arrested Live On-Air While Covering Minneapolis Protests

As the social unrest in Minnesota continues following the horrible death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police earlier this week, POTUS felt the need to weigh in from afar. Tweeting late Thursday night while the city was quite literally going up in flames, the President opted not to share a message to calm people’s agitations and bring the country together, but rather to divide, incite, and provoke (below):

Donald Trump's tweets are being very closely reviewed by Twitter
“This Tweet violated the Twitter rules about glorifying violence,” the warning on Trump’s second tweet showed soon after it was published. “However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.” / (c) Donald Trump/Twitter

Whoa. See that second tweet there, in the thread?! It’s a warning label on a particularly gruesome Trump tweet that seemed to glorify and encourage the shooting of protesters. Yes, really.

Here’s the uncensored tweet itself, if you’re wondering what you missed:

Twitter comes after Donald Trump for bad tweets during Minneapolis riots
“…These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd,” Trump began in the highly-charged tweet, before getting to the particularly horrific part by adding “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Ummmm WTF?! / (c) Donald Trump/Twitter

What the f**k?! “When the looting starts the shooting starts”?! Dude, seriously?? Even for Trump, that is WAY out of line… The President’s tweets have come with warning labels in recent days — and he’s been super pissed about it, of course — but those were more in line with notices about how he was fudging the “facts” on coronavirus death numbers, the validity of mail-in voting ballots, and more.

But it’s one thing to fact check the President (thank goodness Twitter finally decided to start doing it!), and another issue entirely to have to literally put a warning label up because he appears to have tweeted threats of personal violence!

Related: Kathy Griffin Faces More Backlash Over New Trump Comments…

BTW, we’re not being alarmist about this, either. Trump’s “when the looting starts the shooting starts” isn’t some random phrase he plucked out of thin air. It has a very specific history tied to political unrest at the Republican National Convention in Miami way back in 1968.

As you can see in this very informative historical thread (below) giving context on the phrase, the saying was first coined at the time by Miami police chief Walter Headley. It was used as a “get tough” policy for “policing black neighborhoods” amid what was then a particularly difficult period of social upheaval and political unrest:

Wow…

The more things change, the more they stay the same. And not in a good way. Trump hasn’t thought much better of his message as of Friday morning, either; in addition to rambling on about being “censored” by Twitter, the President offered up this little gem regarding the Minneapolis unrest:

Yeah, ummm, that’s not how this works, Donald. Ugh, he’s such an embarrassment to the country!!!

Reactions to all this, Perezcious readers? Are you glad Trump’s tweets are finally being filtered so as to warn the American public about his dangerous thoughts and routine lies or what?? Sound OFF with your take in the comments (below)…

[Image via WENN/Instar/Twitter]

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May 29, 2020 08:59am PDT