In them, Trump seemed to imply that protesters could be shot and that the U.S. military could get involved if violence continued in the city, which was disturbed after a disturbing video emerged from a white policeman pinning a black man in the street by the neck. as he gasped. The man, George Floyd, died while in police custody.
"These THUGS dishonor the memory of George Floyd, and I won't let that happen," Trump wrote on his personal account. "I just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and I told him that the soldiers were with him all the time. Any difficulty and we will take control but, when the looting begins, the shooting will begin. Thank you!" The White House, defying Twitter's objection, then tweeted the same remark on its official account.
The message marked a clear return to form for the President, whose initial response to the situation - calling the video "shocking" and demanding justice - was itself significantly different from the way he had dealt with the brutality. police in the past.
Even the language of his tweet seemed to revert to a severe heaviness that is now being watched to disproportionately affect men of color.
"I let the word leak out that when the looting begins, the shooting begins," Miami police chief Walter Headley said in 1967 as he announced a campaign against crime that included the use dogs, guns and a "stop and frisk" policy.
"We don't mind being accused of police brutality," Headley said at the press conference, according to an article in the New York Times era.
Since then, tactics like "stop and frisk" have been reviewed for their implicit racial bias. The use of tactics such as aggressive hold positions on those arrested has been reviewed for their safety after a number of deaths.
But Trump has rarely spoken out on the issue, and in the first three years of his presidency, he was more likely to rally to law enforcement than to minority communities who protested their tactics.
"I have to be applied correctly, but stop and search," he said.
At other times, Trump appeared to approve of police tactics that could harm those in police custody, including failing to protect the head of an arrested person when put in a police car.
Trump declined to comment on some white-to-black murder cases, including the police death of Stephon Clark in California. He did not comment on the 2014 murder of Eric Garner, whose last words - "I can't breathe" - came when the police put him in a strangulation.
Last year a reporter asked him if he would apologize for his actions in the case - he ran full-page newspaper ads calling for the death penalty: "Bring back the death penalty. Bring back our police! " - Trump asked instead why the topic was relevant.
"Why are you asking this question now? This is an interesting time to raise it. You have people on both sides. They've admitted their guilt," he said.
The story of silence or reflective support for the police seemed to change this month when Trump weighed in on two new cases of white-on-black violence in Georgia and Minnesota.
He called the death of Ahmaud Arbery, who was shot dead by a white man while jogging in February, "heartbreaking". His Department of Justice is investigating the murder as a federal hate crime, although Trump has suggested that "something we didn't see on tape" could explain the murder.
Trump was informed of the Floyd case on Thursday afternoon by Attorney General William Barr and was "very upset" when he saw the video, according to his press secretary. Many Trump allies in the conservative media have echoed Trump's call for justice in this matter.
The change in tone coincided with Trump's campaign effort to take off black Democrat voters, hoping to convince them that Trump is a better candidate than controversial former Vice President Joe Biden last week when he told a radio host that African-American supporters of Trump "are not black."
