On Monday, President Trump finally broke his silence after leaving the nation in agony over the weekend with his failure to issue a formal address as rioters rampaged across America. Speaking from the White House Rose Garden, the president pledged to offer military aid to quell what he described as domestic terror.
“First we are ending the riots and lawlessness that has spread throughout our country. We will end it now,” Trump said. “Today I have strongly recommended to every governor to deploy the National Guard in sufficient numbers that we dominate the streets. Mayors and governors must establish an overwhelming law enforcement presence until the violence has been quelled. If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will quickly deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.”
According to CNN’s Don Lemon, this was evidence that President Trump was ready to institute a dictatorship.
“This was a made-for-television moment,” Lemon said, as reported by Fox News. “And what I wanted to say after that and that I believed to be true and that I know to be true now is that earlier on that phone call … when the president said, ‘You are being weak, you have to show strength’ … those were the orders from the commander in chief.”
“For this very moment that just happened right before our eyes, why were we pretending otherwise? Open your eyes, America. Open your eyes. We are teetering on a dictatorship,” he continued. “This is chaos. Has the president — I’m listening, is the president declaring war on Americans? What is happening here? He is saying that he wants to protect peaceful protesters at the same time sending law enforcement and military into the streets to push peaceful protesters back, to be aggressive with peaceful protesters. He is doing the exact opposite of what he said in that speech.”
Speaking with his colleague Wolf Blitzer, Lemon asserted that Trump is “playing a very, very dangerous game here” while asserting that his efforts to achieve law and order in the face of national chaos will backfire.