(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump urged New York City leaders to crack down on police-brutality protests in the city, warning he would end the demonstrations otherwise.
“If they don't get it straightened out soon, I'll take care of it,” Trump said of New York in an interview with his former Press Secretary Sean Spicer on NewsMax TV, a conservative outlet.
The remark came as Trump and Spicer discussed whether the president would seek to deploy the U.S. military to break up protests. “I don't think we'll have to,” Trump said.
The president was broadly critical and dismissive of protesters in the interview, noting that the demonstrations violate social-distancing recommendations to curb the coronavirus outbreak.
“I watch these protesters and they're the ones that are all claiming ‘social distancing' and everything else, it's really interesting,” he said. “They do that and then they're jumping on top of each other by the thousands when they're screaming and ranting and raving, which is not a good thing.”
He predicted that Democrats would lose the November elections because “they are weak on crime” and claimed credit for stopping protests in Minneapolis, where the demonstrations began following the death of George Floyd as several of the city's police tried to arrest him last week for an alleged counterfeit $20 bill.
“I stopped it in Minnesota, Minneapolis, real fast,” Trump said. “We insisted on the National Guard. It was brutal.”
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported Wednesday that the city has experienced two nights of relative calm after a week of protests, riots and looting estimated to have caused at least $55 million in damages. The state's governor, Democrat Tim Walz, imposed curfews on Minneapolis and neighboring St. Paul this week.
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