President Donald Trump on Monday responded to reports that staffers for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden have contributed money to a group that helps Minnesota protesters get out of jail on bail amid sometimes violent protests, looting, and riots following the death of George Floyd.
“Sleepy Joe Biden’s people are so Radical Left that they are working to get the Anarchists out of jail, and probably more. Joe doesn’t know anything about it, he is clueless, but they will be the real power, not Joe. They will be calling the shots! Big tax increases for all, Plus!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
Later, he suggested in a post that people go out and vote in the general election on Nov. 3.
“It is up to everyone to fight injustice,” Colleen May, who identified herself as a campaign organizer in South Carolina, Florida, and Wisconsin, wrote on Twitter. Her post included a receipt after donating $50 to the Minnesota Freedom Fund.
Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said the former vice president opposes cash bail as a “modern day debtors prison.”
Trump’s campaign stated it was “disturbing” that Biden’s team “would financially support the mayhem that is hurting innocent people and destroying what good people spent their lives building,” responding to the Reuters report.
Biden’s team has not responded yet to a request for comment.
In a statement over the weekend, Biden said that protests following Floyd’s death are appropriate but spoke out against the violence and looting.
“Protesting such brutality is right and necessary. It’s an utterly American response,” he said. “But burning down communities and needless destruction is not. Violence that endangers lives is not. Violence that guts and shutters businesses that serve the community is not.”
Meanwhile, despite curfews in big cities across the United States and the deployment of thousands of National Guard soldiers over the past week, demonstrations descended into violence again on Sunday.
Protesters hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at police in Philadelphia, set a fire near the White House, and were hit with tear gas and pepper spray in Austin, Texas, and other cities. Seven Boston police officers were hospitalized.
On Sunday, Trump took a step further and said the United States is going to declare the far-left Antifa group a terrorist organization in light of the violence.
