How Trump’s scattered team scrambled to respond to historic protests

Trump lurched between conciliatory and aggressive statements as he sought to make a mark amid America’s broadest racial justice protests in a half century.

A barricade of police troops had already formed outside the White House by the time President Donald Trump returned Saturday evening, still giddy from his trip to Florida to watch the first manned commercial spacecraft launch into orbit.

Even before Trump was hurried into the executive complex by nervous aides and Secret Service personnel, the latest milestone in American space exploration had faded into the background — another casualty of a news cycle focused squarely on protests against police violence that devolved into chaos right outside the president’s front door. As the demonstrations continued into Sunday, followed by violence and looting in the late-night hours, Trump remained in retreat: out of the public eye and away from supporters who dismissed his calls for “law and order” as empty threats amid the backdrop of burning vehicles, graffitied storefronts and Washington’s historic St. John’s Church partly engulfed in flames.

The weekend brought the broadest race-focused protests to sweep America in a half century, and laid bare the Trump administration’s struggle to deliver a fitting response. Caught between placating his supporters, who grew agitated by the lack of a swift crackdown on looters, and the desire for soothing words from a nation in need of healing, Trump tried on multiple messages over the tumultuous 48-hour period — each time his words carrying the risk of exacerbating tensions further.

In a Rose Garden address Monday, against the noise of flash bangs and tear gas unleashed on streets just outside the White House gates, Trump cast himself as a “president of law and order.”

“My first and highest duty as president is to defend our great country and the American people. I swore an oath to uphold the laws of our nation and that is exactly what I will do,” he declared.