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The White House late Sunday morning announced that President Donald Trump would not appear on camera today, ending talk that he might address the nation regarding the protests seen across the country over the past few days.
Hosts of the Sunday television news shows had suggested a speech by the president might be in the cards and asked their guests what his message should be.
But later in the morning, the White House declared a so-called lid, meaning the president was not going to be seen on camera. There had been no public events scheduled for the president.
Democrats and one Republican governor criticized Trump’s language to date on the unrest and urged him to stay silent.
There were violent protests in dozens of American cities Saturday night.
On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said Trump “should just stop talking” because he was “making it worse.”
On Twitter early Sunday, the president said that “the lamestream media” are composed of “truly bad people”; that the U.S. would designate the anti-fascist movement known as antifa as a terrorist organization; and that the National Guard troops called up by the Democratic governor of Minnesota had done a “great job.”
White House national-security adviser Robert O’Brien described criticism of Trump’s response to the protests as misplaced. The president “is with the peaceful protesters,” O’Brien said on ABC News’s “This Week.”
The Trump tweet threatening that any protesters breaching the White House perimeter would be met by “ominous weapons” and “vicious dogs,” as well as his when-the-looting-starts-the-shooting-starts tweet, represented an effort by the president to “de-escalate violence,” O’Brien told CNN.
O’Brien said the White House wanted the FBI to investigate antifa.
Keith Ellison, the attorney general of Minnesota, said there were conflicting reports about the presence of outside protesters in the Twin Cities.
“There have been a lot of videotape taken by demonstrators of people who are very suspicious,” breaking windows and driving around in cars without license plates, Ellison told CNN. But some of them said they were Minneapolis residents, Ellison noted.
At this point, “nobody really knows,” Ellison said, adding that an investigation was underway.
