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):

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:

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:
2/ Headley promised to use shotguns, dogs, & “stop and frisk” tactics.
“We don’t mind being accused of police brutality,” the New York Times reported him saying at the time. “They haven’t seen anything yet” Headley said.
— igorvolsky (@igorvolsky) May 29, 2020
4/ That incident, Headley’s policing & the treatment of Black residents by white shopkeepers and absentee landlords led to a 3-day riot in Miami in summer of 1968. By the conflict’s end, 3 people died at the hands of police, 18 were wounded, and 222 arrests were made.
— igorvolsky (@igorvolsky) May 29, 2020
6/ Here is an actual news report from Dec. 1967 reporting on Headley's “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” line: pic.twitter.com/YIC9JZZCHC
— igorvolsky (@igorvolsky) May 29, 2020
8/ I'm reading the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence report — which examined the causes of the 1968 Miami riots.
Here's how it describes Headley (the police chief Trump is quoting). pic.twitter.com/6srqCbTPYS
— igorvolsky (@igorvolsky) May 29, 2020
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:
The National Guard has arrived on the scene. They are in Minneapolis and fully prepared. George Floyd will not have died in vain. Respect his memory!!!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2020
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)…