President Donald Trump on Sunday shared a video of an apparent protester’s feet burning during a riot in Portland, Oregon, set to the upbeat tune of “Footloose.”
The video: Trump retweeted the video — one of many darkly humorous edits of the footage from Saturday night — shortly after it was posted by White House social media director Dan Scavino.
- “These are the Democrats ‘peaceful protests’,” the president commented. “Sick!”
In the footage, the man is seen frantically high-stepping and then rolling on the ground in an attempt to put out the flames, which were apparently ignited by a Molotov cocktail thrown by someone in the crowd.
- Kenny Loggins’ 1984 smash hit plays in the background.
The reaction: Versions of the 33-second “Footloose” video have been viewed at least 5.4 million times on Twitter, provoking schadenfreude in many conservative viewers.
But some of Trump’s critics on Twitter responded by accusing him of taking perverse pleasure in the flaming man’s suffering.
Others insisted that Trump — rather than the Democrats — was promoting violence amid unrest associated with racial justice protests in U.S. cities.
According to Portland police, an unnamed person’s feet were set ablaze on Saturday around 9:15 p.m. when someone threw a Molotov cocktail at a line of officers who were blocking protesters from again marching on the East Precinct.
- “Multiple fire bombs, mortars, rocks, and other items were thrown at law enforcement during a riot Saturday night in Southeast Portland,” the police said in a statement about the city’s 100th straight night of destructive protests, which saw 75 arrests.
- In response to the injurious Molotov cocktail explosion, the police said they declared a riot and deployed crowd-control munitions, including tear gas and pepper balls, to disperse the protesters.
- The burned person was taken to a hospital by a private vehicle, authorities said.
Orange man bad?: A pair of deadly and headline-making shootings at protests late last month in Portland and Kenosha, Wisconsin have heightened concerns about violence associated with unrest in many, mostly Democrat-run, U.S. cities.
- Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and other prominent liberals and media figures have blamed Trump, saying he inflames tensions with his politics.
- But conservative commentators have scoffed at what they see as the left’s hypocrisy — saying Trump has tried to crack down on the violence for months, while local and national Democratic leaders, as well as the elite media, have downplayed the problem.
- National Review’s David Harsanyi wrote on Sept. 1: “Democrats have spent years stoking conspiratorial and paranoid fantasies” about Republican “fascism,” and recently “the hysteria devolved into violence” and “caught up to Democrats in the polls.”
- “Now,” he said. “they’re just attempting to whitewash history.”
