President Trump said on Tuesday that protesters who assembled during a military parade he planned in Washington on Saturday for the Army’s 250th birthday would be met with “very big force” — a dark warning that made no distinction between peaceful demonstrations and violent confrontations.
In remarks from the Oval Office before he left for North Carolina, where he was scheduled to participate in events at Fort Bragg related to the anniversary, Mr. Trump boasted about the “amazing day” he planned before saying that any demonstrators would be dealt with harshly.
“For those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force,” Mr. Trump said. “And I haven’t even heard about a protest, but you know, this is people that hate our country, but they will be met with very heavy force.”
Mr. Trump’s comments came after the president spent several minutes praising his administration’s deployment of thousands of National Guard and Marines in response to protests that had broken out over the weekend in Los Angeles against sweeping federal immigration raids.
The episodes of unrest have included burned cars, concrete chunks hurled at officers and robberies at spots like an Apple store. Supporters of the California protests who oppose Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdowns have said the protests were largely peaceful, and that the episodes of violence have been amplified by Mr. Trump’s allies and administration.
Mr. Trump’s Oval Office remarks cited some of those violent images, and he maintained, without offering evidence, that the protesters were “paid insurrectionists” He declared that Los Angeles had been “under siege until we got there,” although officials in the state — many of whom have spoken out against the violence — say he has only inflamed tensions by deploying the military.
Regarding Saturday’s parade, Mr. Trump made no distinction between the right to peacefully assemble that is guaranteed by the First Amendment and engaging in violence and vandalism.
Protests have already been planned across the country on the day of the parade, which is also Mr. Trump’s 79th birthday. Progressive groups are organizing demonstrations they are calling the NO KINGS Nationwide Day of Defiance intended to draw attention away from Mr. Trump, and to “reject corrupt, authoritarian politics in the United States.”
The groups have opted against an event in Washington, saying in a statement that Mr. Trump is seeking “a made-for-TV display of dominance for his birthday.” They added, “real power isn’t staged in Washington — it rises up everywhere else.”
Mr. Trump’s remarks fit into a decades-long pattern of expressing close to unfettered support for law enforcement, and contempt for demonstrators and protesters.
In 2020, Mr. Trump asked military officials about the possibility of shooting protesters during the unrest that roiled cities after the murder of George Floyd, a Black man who was murdered by a white police officer. Mr. Trump also met resistance from his own defense secretary at the time, Mark T. Esper, over his desire to send active-duty troops into Washington.
In 1990, well before his political career, Mr. Trump also offered his thoughts about how Chinese troops should have more swiftly carried out the massacre of protesters who had gathered in Tiananmen Square in a student-led movement for democracy.
“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it,” Trump told Playboy Magazine, comparing that response favorably to how Mikhail Gorbachev responded to unrest in the Soviet Union. “Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.”
But Mr. Trump has not universally condemned protests.
When violent demonstrations have originated on the right or when they involve some of his supporters, he has downplayed the violence or suggested the protesters were victims. Mr. Trump has been criticized for his own delayed reaction to the attack on the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, certification of the 2020 election by a pro-Trump mob.
The Jan. 6 rioters, the bulk of whom he granted clemency en mass on the first day of his second term, were at the Capitol for what he has repeatedly described as a “day of love.”
