# Donald Trump — "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" > [!quote] "....These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won't let that happen. 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. Thank you!" > — Donald Trump, Twitter, May 29, 2020 ## Context Posted in the early hours of May 29, 2020, as protests over the police murder of [[George Floyd]] spread across Minneapolis and the country. The line "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" originates with Miami police chief Walter Headley, who used it in 1967 to threaten Black residents — a provenance widely noted at the time. Twitter placed a public-interest notice on the tweet for "glorifying violence" — the first time the company had applied that notice to a Trump post. ## Why this matters **1. State violence threatened against protesters by the president.** The post paired a military-takeover threat with a phrase historically used to menace Black Americans, aimed at participants in the largest protest wave in U.S. history. **2. The first platform-moderation milestone against Trump.** It is the inaugural use of Twitter's "glorifying violence" public-interest notice on Trump — the start of the platform-vs-president moderation arc that ended in his January 2021 suspension. That arc is the throughline of the Social Posts incitement cluster. ## Verification - **Wording**: reproduced verbatim by CNN, TIME, NBC News, Deadline. - **Twitter notice**: "glorifying violence" public-interest notice; first applied to a Trump tweet (CNN, TIME, Deadline). - **Historical origin**: 1967, Miami police chief Walter Headley (PolitiFact, NPR). ## See also - [[Donald Trump - 2020-05-29 - looting starts shooting starts]] — paired Social Post entry (the moderation-action artifact) - [[Twitter]] — the venue - [[George Floyd]] — the protests' context