Trump’s feud with Bowser escalates amid police brutality protests
The first night of major unrest in Washington had exploded in chaos on May 29, with protesters and Secret Service officers battling outside the White House. At 8:30 the next morning, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser and her senior aides huddled on a conference call for an update from the city’s police chief.
Over the past 10 days — set against the backdrop of the pitched national protests over police violence — their once relatively temperate relationship has erupted into an ugly schism freighted with the overtones of race and power that have infused the protests, as well as city leaders’ long and fruitless fight for D.C. statehood.
The dig appeared aimed to humiliate Trump, who revels in projecting strength. Though mayoral aides said Bowser didn’t know it at the time, the Secret Service had moved Trump to a secure bunker under the White House during the height of the chaos Friday, a detail made public in a New York Times report last Sunday.
“Why did things deteriorate so fast? Because for two solid days nothing happened in Washington, D.C., when it was within the mayor’s power to make sure that something could happen,” said a senior Trump administration official who has dealt with Bowser. “You had images on national TV of facilities burning, which reportedly were a church and parts of a park in the center of our nation’s capital, which sent a very bad message to the world.”Bowser had implemented an 11 p.m.
At 6:43 p.m., Trump began remarks in the Rose Garden, pledging support for peaceful protesters but chastising the looters for committing “acts of domestic terror.”“We are putting everybody on warning: Our 7 o’clock curfew will be strictly enforced,” Trump declared — though it was the city that had the sole enforcement authority.
Bowser fought back, demanding that all federal forces not based in the city be removed. On Thursday, she publicly expressed alarm that the new federal security perimeter would become permanent, and she sent Trump a letter saying the presence of the federal forces was “inflaming” the situation and was unnecessary. Arrests of protesters had dropped to 29 on Tuesday and zero on Wednesday, according to D.C. police.
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