In a Rose Garden speech on June 1, 2020, President Trump said he would deploy the U.S. military to stop violence if a city or state refused to do so, and declared himself the ally of peaceful protestors, following the police killing of George Floyd. While he was speaking, federal law enforcement officials used batons, rubber bullets, pepper spray projectiles, stun grenades, and smoke to remove a largely peaceful crowd from Lafayette Square, outside the White House. The removal had been ordered by Attorney General William Barr. Trump then walked to St. John's Episcopal Church where the night before a small fire had been set in the basement nursery of its parish house. He posed for photographs holding a Bible, with Cabinet members and other officials later joining him in photos. Trump, who had attended services at the church three times since taking office, did not enter the church or inspect the damage to the basement.
According to a Comey memo of a private conversation on February 14, 2017, Trump said he "hoped" Comey would drop the investigation into National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.In March and April, Trump had told Comey the ongoing suspicions formed a "cloud" impairing his presidency, and asked him to publicly state that he was not personally under investigation. He also asked intelligence chiefs Dan Coats and Michael Rogers to issue statements saying there was no evidence that his campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election. Both refused, considering this an inappropriate request, although not illegal. Comey eventually testified on June 8 that, while he was director, the FBI investigations had not targeted Trump himself.
More InfoCongress twice passed resolutions to block Trump's national emergency declarations, but Trump twice vetoed them, and Congress did not have enough votes override Trump's veto. Trump's decision to divert other government funding to fund the wall resulted in legal challenges. In July 2019, the Supreme Court allowed Trump to use $2.5 billion (originally meant for anti-drug programs) from the Department of Defense to build the Trump wall. In December 2019, a federal judge stopped the Trump administration from using $3.6 billion of military construction funds for the Trump wall.
More InfoHis foreign policy has been marked by repeated praise and support of neo-nationalist and authoritarian strongmen and criticism of democratically-led governments. Trump has cited China's president Xi Jinping, Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Turkey's president Tayyip Erdoğan, King Salman of Saudi Arabia, Italy's prime minister Giuseppe Conte, Brazil's president Jair Bolsonaro, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán as examples of good leaders.
More InfoOn April 22, Trump signed an executive order restricting some forms of immigration to the United States. In April 2020, Republican-connected groups organized anti-lockdown protests against the measures state governments were taking to combat the pandemic; Trump encouraged the protests on Twitter, even though the targeted states did not meet the Trump administration's own guidelines for reopening. He first supported, then later criticized Georgia Governor Brian Kemp's plan to reopen some nonessential businesses, which was a key example of Trump often reversing his stances in his communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout the spring he increasingly pushed for ending the restrictions as a way to reverse the damage to the country's economy.
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