US President Donald Trump has threatened “retribution” against those seeking to topple statues of historical figures in Washington.
“Every night we are gonna get tougher and tougher,” Trump said during a town hall event that partially aired on Fox News.
“At some point there is going to be retribution because there has to be. These people are vandals, but they are agitators but they’re really – they are terrorists in a sense,” the president said.
Statues and monuments with racist legacies have been toppled and destroyed by protesters across the country in recent weeks as the nation undergoes a reckoning with its racist history following the death of George Floyd, a black man, in police custody last month.
On Wednesday, around 400 National Guard troops were activated at the US government’s request to guard monuments in Washington.
On Monday, evening protesters attempted to tear down the statue of former US president Andrew Jackson outside the White House.
Trump threatened them with 10 years of imprisonment for violating the Veteran’s Memorial Preservation Act – a law that prohibits the destruction of statues or memorials on federal land.
Jackson, who served as the seventh US president from 1828-1836, had ties to slave trading.
He also implemented the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which resulted in the death of thousands of Native Americans, known as the Trail of Tears.
A sign posted in a protest encampment in a park near City Hall in New York City outlines the protesters’ demands.
