Fox’s Harris Faulkner asks Trump about Juneteenth rally date, scolds him in ‘no holds barred’ interview

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Fox News host Harris Faulkner confronted President Donald Trump during an interview Thursday about his recent “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” tweet.

As businesses were being burnt to a crisp, stores were being emptied out of their goods and innocent men and women were being murdered during the recent George Floyd riots, the president posted tweets warning that the hooligans responsible for all the death and destruction would pay the ultimate price unless they stopped.

Look:

While still available for viewing, the second tweet has been overlaid with a warning accusing it of “glorifying violence.”

The tweets triggered widespread condemnations from critics who claimed that threatening to kill looters, rioters and other hooligans constituted racism.

During Faulkner’s interview with Trump, she seemed to reiterate this point while also highlighting to the president that she’s a black woman and mother.

“You look at me and I’m Harris on TV, but I’m a black woman, I’m a mom,” she said. “You’ve talked about it, but we haven’t seen you be a consoler in this instance. And the tweets, ‘When the looting starts, the shooting starts.’ Why those words?”

“That’s an expression I’ve heard over the years,” the president replied.

“Do you know where it comes from?” Faulkner pressed.

“I think Philadelphia — the mayor of Philadelphia,” Trump replied.

Faulker said that was wrong.

“No, it comes from 1967. I was about 18 months old at the time. … It was from the chief of police in Miami. He was cracking down, and he meant what he said,” she replied.

“And he said, ‘I don’t even care if it makes it look like brutality, I’m going to crack down, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.’ That frightened a lot of people when you tweeted that.”

See the related clip from the FNC interview below (disable your adblocker if the video doesn’t appear):

Faulkner’s explanation wasn’t the full story.

In late 1967, as armed robberies and unrest gripped black neighborhoods in Miami, the city’s white police chief — a tough-talking former U.S. Army Cavalry officer who parted his hair straight down the middle — held a news conference ‘declaring war’ on criminals,” The Washington Post notes.

The police, Chief Walter Headley warned, would use shotguns and dogs at his command. And then he uttered the phrase that President Trump drew.”

Chief Walter Headley’s threat of violence against the “criminals” who were wreaking havoc in black neighborhoods reportedly triggered “massive upheaval and several investigations” at the time.

Confronted by the phrase’s true origins, the president argued that, while it’d originated with Headley, he’d heard it from other folks — many times, too.

“It also comes from a very tough mayor who might have been police commissioner at the time … named Frank Rizzo. And he had an expression like that. But I’ve heard it many times. I think it’s been used many times,” he said.

“It means two very different things. One, if there’s looting, there’s probably going to be shooting, and that’s not a threat — that’s just a fact, because that’s what happens. The other is if there’s looting, there’s going to be shooting. They are very different meanings.”

This wasn’t the first the time he’d been forced to explain his tweets.

Here’s another example below:

At least a dozen innocent men and women were killed during the looting and rioting that occurred earlier this month, including retired St. Louis police captain turned pawnshop owner David Dorn, a black man.

During the interview Thursday, the president also spoke about his upcoming June 19th rally, the anarchy in Seattle and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley’s recent comments apologizing for what happened at St. John’s Church.

Additional clips from the interview may be seen Friday afternoon on Fox News’ “Outnumbered Overtime with Harris Faulkner.”

Fox News provided transcripts of parts of President Donald Trump’s interview:

HARRIS FAULKNER: Your rally in Oklahoma is set for June 19th. Was that on purpose?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No, but I know exactly what you’re going to say.

FAULKNER: Well, I’m just asking. I’ve not got anything to say.

TRUMP: Think about it as a celebration. My rally is a celebration. In the history of politics, I think I can say there’s never been any group or any person that’s had rallies like I do. I go and I just say, give me the biggest stadium and we fill it up every time. We’ve never had a vacancy.

President Donald Trump on the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley’s comments that he regrets appearing alongside him in the photo in Lafayette Square:

HARRIS FAULKNER: General Milley, Joint Chiefs of Staff, I don’t know how much you knew that he was going to say today before he spoke. But he says he regrets having been there. He apologized, having been there on the Lafayette Square with you for the picture, the infamous picture as you walked to the church and held the bible.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think it was a beautiful picture. I’ll tell you, I think Christians think it was a beautiful picture

FAULKNER: but why do you think you’re hearing from General Milley, from Secretary of Defense Esper, and not why you think you are, but do you think it’s significant?

TRUMP: No, I don’t think so. I mean, if that’s the way they feel, I think that’s fine. I have good relationships with the military. I’ve rebuilt our military. I spent two and a half-trillion dollars. Nobody else did. When we took it over from President Obama and Biden, the military was a joke. The military was depleted. They had planes that were 50, 60 years old. They had old broken equipment. We had no ammunition. We had no ammunition. Now, we have the greatest military we’ve ever had. I have a very good – and we have space force. I mean, I just did something that wasn’t done in almost 80 years. It’s a new force. It’s called space force. And that’s where the future is in space. I mean, a lot of people don’t get it.

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