Atlanta mayor to President Trump: ‘Just stop talking’ – By David Matthews (New York Daily News) / May 31 2020
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms urged President Trump to “just stop talking” after protests sprang up across the country following the death of George Floyd.
“There are times where you should just stop, and this is one of those times,” Bottoms said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “He’s making it worse. This is not about using military force. This is about where we are in America. We are beyond a tipping point in this country, and his rhetoric only inflames that, and he should sometimes just stop talking.”
Trump’s tweets about the protests included the word “thugs,” a word considered by many as a dog whistle and the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” a phrase first used in 1967 by Miami police Chief Walter Headley to derisively describe the civil rights movement and defend against accusations of police brutality. President Trump later claimed to have no knowledge of the phrase’s racist past.
Twitter went so far as to put a label on the tweet because it “violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence,” further escalating the president’s feud with the social media platform.
Bottoms said Sunday that Trump’s rhetoric was “reminiscent of Charlottesville, where President Trump just made it worse.” After a white nationalist killed an anti-racism protester at a August 2017 demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia, President Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides” at the protest, one of many instances where Trump appeared to defend white nationalists.
“He speaks and he makes it worse,” Bottoms told CNN on Sunday. “There are times when you should just be quiet and I wish that he would just be quiet. Or if he can’t be silent, if there is somebody of good sense and good conscience in the White House, put him in front of a Teleprompter and pray he reads it and at least says the right things, because he is making it worse.”
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