Trump says he canceled New Jersey trip to ensure ‘law & order is enforced’ in Washington, DC
President Donald Trump tweeted that he abruptly canceled a planned trip to New Jersey on Friday to “make sure LAW ORDER is enforced” in Washington, D.C.
Trump’s late afternoon Twitter post was the first time he or the White House explained the sudden cancellation on Friday morning of his scheduled visit this weekend to his golf course in Bedminster, NJ.
The White House earlier had said that the cancellation was unrelated to a new order by Gov. Phil Murphy requiring visitors to the Garden State to quarantine after being in states with increasing numbers of coronavirus cases.
“I was going to go to Bedminster, New Jersey, this weekend, but wanted to stay in Washington, D.C. to make sure LAW ORDER is enforced,” Trump wrote in his Twitter post.
“The arsonists, anarchists, looters, and agitators have been largely stopped. .. I am doing what is necessary to keep our communities safe — and these people will be brought to Justice!”
The president soon afterward tweeted that he had just signed “a very strong Executive Order protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues – and combating recent Criminal Violence.”
Trump’s tweets came a day after sources told NBC News that Trump personally called Interior Department Secretary David Bernhardt and asked that the Park Service put back up a statue of Albert Pike, a Confederate general, which was pulled down and set on fire last week by protesters in a Washington park.
On Monday, protesters tied ropes around the statue of President Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square, just across from the White House, but were scattered by police using pepper spray before they could topple the statue.
On Thursday, law enforcement authorities put up barriers around the Emancipation Memorial in the Capitol Hill area to prevent it from potential damage from protesters. Some protesters have called for removal of the memorial, which depicts President Abraham Lincoln holding a copy of his Emancipation Proclamation, as a Black man kneels at Lincoln’s feet.
The U.S. has seen protests nationwide calling for reform of police and the removal of Confederate statues and other memorials seen as objectionable on the heels of the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, on Memorial Day by Minneapolis police.
Four now-fired cops have been arrested and charge in Floyd’s death, which occurred after one of them, Derek Chauvin, kneeled on his neck for nearly eight minutes during an arrest.
Murphy, the New Jersey governor, told CNBC earlier Friday that his coronavirus quarantine order would not have applied to Trump, because “by any definition the president of the United States is an essential worker.”
Two days ago, a White House spokesman that Trump still planned to go to New Jersey despite Murphy’s order, which mirrors identical directives issued this week by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont to visitors who had been in a number of states with rising coronavirus cases.
Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/26/covid-19-trump-cancels-new-jersey-trip-after-coronavirus-quarantine-rule.html