WHITE HOUSE - Declaring "acts of domestic terror" have been committed by violent demonstrators, U.S. President Donald Trump vowed Monday evening to end "the riots and lawlessness that has spread throughout our country."
Trump said he was "mobilizing all available federal resources, civilian and military, to stop the rioting and looting, to end the destruction and arson, and to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans, including your Second Amendment rights."
Just before the president spoke, reporters awaiting his remarks in the Rose Garden could hear loud explosions from volleys of tear gas fired around Lafayette Park, where riot police holding shields aloft pushed back peaceful demonstrators. Rubber bullets were also fired, and police on horseback were brought into help clear the area.
The movement by law enforcement came less than a half-hour before a 7 p.m. curfew went into effect for Washington.
The action cleared the way — but not the smell of the tear gas — around St. John's Church, a block north of the White House, to which Trump walked just minutes after the curfew went into effect. The historic Episcopal Church suffered minor damage Sunday evening when a small fire was set in its basement.
In front of the boarded-up church, Trump held up a Bible, referred to the United States as the "greatest country in the world," and said, "we're going to keep it safe."
Then Trump walked back to the White House surrounded by heavy security.
"If a city or state refuses to take the actions necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them," Trump warned in his Rose Garden remarks, making an apparent reference that he could invoke the Insurrection Act.
The 1807 Act allows presidents to quell lawlessness during emergencies and was most recently used in 1992 amid rioting in Los Angeles after the police beating of Rodney King.
“President Trump’s decision to invoke the Insurrection Act, and his inflammatory rhetoric, proves that he cannot lead us through these tumultuous times and unite the country Instead, he has decided to rely on the use of force to address those who he views as a threat,” said Congressman Adam Smith, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, in a statement.
The president, according to Defense Department officials, has ordered the Army to deploy an active duty military police battalion for Washington, the single jurisdiction where the military can do so without first consulting the governor of a state.
All 1,200 National Guard forces in the nation's capital have been mobilized, and five states were quickly sending between 600 and 800 additional Guard troops, some armed with lethal weapons, according to officials.
Additional U.S. active duty troops, including military police and engineering units, have been placed on standby outside the District of Columbia but are poised to move in if necessary, officials say.
Trump's action is being viewed as his most overt flexing of authoritarian muscle since he took office 3½ years ago.
"We are teetering on a dictatorship," Don Lemon said on CNN immediately following the president's remarks. "I think the president is playing a very, very dangerous game here."
The president has repeatedly referred to CNN as "fake news" and frequently characterizes the mainstream U.S. media as "enemies of the people."
Earlier Monday, governors received a lecture from Trump, the defense secretary and the attorney general, exhorting them to get tough with unruly protesters on the streets of America's cities.
In a conference call with governors about the violent demonstrations across the country, the leaders of the states received a browbeating from the president.
"Most of you are weak," the president told them, according to an audio recording of the call. "You have to dominate. If you don't dominate, you're wasting your time. They're going to run over you, you're going to look like a bunch of jerks."
Trump is facing criticism for not adopting the traditional presidential role of "consoler-in-chief" since the death of African American George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis, prompted a national outpouring of agony and anger.
The president, instead, has spent time on Twitter attacking former Vice President Joe Biden, other Democratic politicians and lumping them in with the far-left radicals he blames for the violence in recent days.
The call with Trump on Monday was "deeply disturbing," said Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat.