The Atlantic - Trump’s Looting Tweet Violates His Oath of Office

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Overnight, protests of the egregious police killing of George Floyd roiled several American cities, including Minneapolis, where riots and looting frightened locals and destroyed livelihoods.

A prudent president would have urged calm.

On Twitter, President Donald Trump instead aggressively insulted elected officials in Minneapolis. “A total lack of leadership,” he wrote. “Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his act together and bring the City under control, or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right.”

Then Trump threatened to unleash American carnage on looters. “These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen,” he declared in a second tweet. “Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

Twitter quickly appended a note to the president’s message: “This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence,” it stated. “However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.” It isn’t clear that threatening to shoot looters technically glorifies violence, but the ostensible Twitter violation, which quickly made headlines, is less important than the constitutional problem with Trump’s public threat of lethal force.

As the legal scholar Orin Kerr noted, “Actually following a policy of ‘when the looting starts, the shooting starts’ would violate the 4th Amendment, for starters.” He cited the precedent in Tennessee v. Garner.

That case originated in Memphis, where two police officers, including Elton Hymon, were dispatched to catch a prowler. In the backyard of a house, Hymon saw a suspect he judged to be 17 or 18 run to a back fence. “Halt,” he said, “police.” The suspect tried to climb over the fence to escape. Hymon shot him in the back of the head and recovered a purse with $10 in it. He later cited a Tennessee statute that said, “If, after notice of the intention to arrest the defendant, he either flee or forcibly resist, the officer may use all the necessary means to effect the arrest.”

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