Tweet

Trump Threatens Protesters Who Plan To Organize Outside Tulsa Rally: ‘Lowlifes’ Won’t Be ‘Treated’ Well

Donald Trump
Shutterstock
A person walks past a graffito showing late George Floyd, in Berlin, Germany, 30 May 2020. A bystander's video posted online on 25 May, appeared to show George Floyd, 46, pleading with arresting officers that he couldn't breathe as an officer knelt on his neck in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The unarmed black man later died in police custody. A series of demonstrations throughout the German capital, calling for ending of the social and economical restrictions imposed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The events are organised by groups of various motives, right wing activists, conspiracy theory believers and more, several counter demonstrations by left leaning organisations were also taking place. Anti-restrictions protests and counter demos in Berlin, Germany - 30 May 2020
Mayor Bill de Blasio, third from left, participates in painting Black Lives Matter on Fifth Avenue in front of Trump Tower, in New York. The mayor's wife, Chirlane McCray, is fourth from left and Rev. Al Sharpton is second from left Racial Injustice , New York, United States - 09 Jul 2020
People pose with a new Black Lives Matter mural outside of Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York. Black Lives Matter mural, New York, USA - 09 Jul 2020
"Black Lives Matter" is spelled out in giant yellow letters on a street mural located in front of Borough Hall in Brooklyn New York on June 27, 2020. Black Lives Matter is spelled out in giant yellow letters on a street mural located, Brooklyn, New York, USA - 27 Jun 2020 View Gallery View Gallery 25 Photos.
Political News Editor

Donald Trump promised protesters — or ‘lowlifes,’ as he calls them — won’t be treated well if they gather outside his June 20 rally in Tulsa. ‘It will be a much different scene,’ he tweeted.

One day before his controversial campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, President Donald Trump was already getting agitated. Trump, 74, took to Twitter to threaten anyone thinking about protesting outside the June 20 event with implied violence. “Any protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes who are going to Oklahoma please understand, you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis,” the president wrote on June 19. “It will be a much different scene!”

Trump’s threat comes the day his Tulsa rally was supposed to be held — Juneteenth. The White House pushed back the event after massive national outcry regarding their tone deafness. The holiday marks the day slaves were officially emancipated in the United States; Tulsa is the site of the single worst incident of racial violence in American history, when a mob of white residents massacred a black neighborhood in 1921, leaving an estimated 300 people dead.

Today, protesters are rallying across the country for justice against police brutality, racial inequality — and Trump. He’s threatened violence against the protesters who first took to the streets in Minneapolis in late May, where George Floyd was killed at the hands of police. The protests spread to all 50 states, and Trump announced on Twitter that he may send the National Guard to fight the “thugs.”

Donald Trump
President Donald Trump (Shutterstock)

The president’s tweets were flagged by Twitter for “glorifying violence.” He had written, “These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”

Trump also weighed invoking the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to deploy the US military against its own citizens. Activist Kimberly Jones, whose passionate speech about racial inequality got national attention, told HollywoodLife in an EXCLUSIVE interview that she feels Trump should apologize for the timing of his Tulsa rally. She’s not holding her breath about it, though.

“There should have been a profuse apology,” Kimberly told us. “There should have been an announcement of wanting to better educate themselves about what happened here to his Black citizens, but we’re not going to get that. So, at that point, after he did it, there was nothing he could have done that would have pleased me.” She believes that the timing of his rally — on Juneteenth in Tulsa — was deliberate. “There’s no way you could combine those two moments together and not be aware of what that would mean to people. [If he was unaware] then that’s even sadder.”