Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) is responding to President Donald Trump’s attacks on her leadership as mayor.
During an interview with The Daily Beast, Bowser said that most of the protests in Washington, D.C. were peaceful and argued that the city’s police could have handled the violence without the influx of National Guard troops.
When asked what it felt like to have National Guard troops in the city, Bowser said, “We have spent the last week trying to defend our borders, defend our autonomy, and make sure protesters could be in the city peacefully.”
On Monday, Bowser blasted Trump for sending National Guard troops to the city, “We saw in Washington, D.C., federal forces used in a political stunt to attack peaceful protests.”
“We saw the American military moved around like toy soldiers around the country to intimidate Americans in Washington, D.C.,” she added.
“At no time did we have a level of destruction. And we had very little violence,” Bowser said as she dismissed Trump’s suggestion that she was unable to crack down on violent demonstrations.
“But at no time was that something that our police department — our own police department — wouldn’t be able to get under control,” she added.
Additionally, she said that as more peaceful protesters showed up they “drowned out any bad actors.”
Trump has received criticism over the decision to activate the National Guard in Washington, D.C., to help quell the violence, as IJR reported. Roughly 4,500 troops from various states were sent to the city to stop the violent demonstrations and vandalism.
Last week, images surfaced of National Guard troops standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in a bid to protect the monument from vandalism after several memorials had been vandalized.
Your Lincoln Memorial this evening. pic.twitter.com/QByGgWeDDm
— Martha Raddatz (@MarthaRaddatz) June 3, 2020
Bowser had previously called for the out-of-state troops to leave the city, “The very first thing is we want the military — we want troops from out-of-state out of Washington, D.C.”
On Sunday, Trump announced that he had ordered the withdrawal of the national guard troops from the city.
