Trump to visit Kenosha in wake of racial unrest
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Protesters march towards the Kenosha County Courthouse on Aug 29, 2020.
PHOTO: REUTERS
WASHINGTON (AFP) - President Donald Trump will travel next week to the Midwestern city where African American Jacob Blake was shot multiple times in the back by a white policeman, sparking a nationwide wave of protest, the White House said Saturday (Aug 29).
Trump will meet police in Kenosha, Wisconsin on Tuesday and "survey damage from recent riots" triggered by Blake's shooting last weekend, administration spokesman Judd Deere said.
Blake took at least half a dozen shots in the back in front of his small children as he tried to get into a car, in an incident that triggered an outpouring of anger over yet another shooting of a black man by white police.
Deere did not say if Trump would meet the family of Blake, who was left paralysed from the waist down.
Protesters have taken to the streets nationwide this summer over the killing of black men by police, including George Floyd in Minneapolis in May.
Trump has characterised the mostly-peaceful activists as vicious rioters as he presses a law and order message while fighting an uphill battle for re-election in November.
