President Donald Trump is withdrawing National Guard units from Washington, D.C., “now that everything is under control.”
Trump blasted Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser for her response to the protests that erupted after George Floyd’s death. And he credited his response for a reduction in violence.
During an interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Bowser said the federal response and Trump’s rhetoric turned out a larger number of peaceful protesters, “What he actually did, as you saw, for the remaining days was turn out more people and more people who were there for peaceful protests.”
“What America saw was federal police forces tear-gassing peaceful Americans. And how they responded made clear to clear the president that Americans would exercise their First Amendment rights and they would do it peacefully,” she said.
Watch the video below:
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser tells @MarthaRaddatz the federal response to George Floyd protests and Trump’s rhetoric encouraged more people to demonstrate: “What he actually did … was turn out more people and more people who were there for peaceful protests.” https://t.co/5LnuhcnzxG pic.twitter.com/gHPH2o83R0
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) June 7, 2020
Bowser added, “People gathered at various locations and walked down to Black Lives Matter Plaza where you saw a lot of people coming together, healing, organizing, strategizing, and thinking about how to make real the frustrations that they brought with them to these demonstrations.”
After several nights of violence in the city, roughly 5,000 National Guard troops had been called to Washington, D.C., to help quell the violence.
Trump also blasted Bowser and called her “incompetent.” He said in a tweet, “@MayorBowser is grossly incompetent, and in no way qualified to be running an important city like Washington, D.C. If the great men and women of the National Guard didn’t step forward, she would have looked no better than her counterpart Mayor in Minneapolis!”
.@MayorBowser is grossly incompetent, and in no way qualified to be running an important city like Washington, D.C. If the great men and women of the National Guard didn’t step forward, she would have looked no better than her counterpart Mayor in Minneapolis!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2020
By Saturday, the number of arrests related to the demonstrations had dropped drastically. The reduction in violence led Bowser to lift a curfew that had been in place, and eventually led Trump to announce the withdrawal of the National Guard troops.