Trump will visit Kenosha on Tuesday to meet cops and ‘survey the damage’ from the protests

President Trump will visit Kenosha, Wisconsin on Tuesday, following days of protests in the city over the police shooting of black man Jacob Blake, the White House announced on Saturday.

Trump will meet with ‘law enforcement and survey damage from recent riots’, White House spokesman Judd Deere told reporters aboard Air Force One.

He did not say if the president will meet the family of Blake, who was left paralyzed from the waist down after he was shot multiple times in the back by police officers.

The visit is certain to exacerbate tensions in the city, where a crowd of about 1,000 demonstrators gathered outside a courthouse Saturday to denounce police violence.

Trump has been running his reelection campaign on a law-and-order mantle, denouncing protesters as ‘thugs’ while voicing his support for police.

He has also repeatedly offered to send in the National Guard or federal assistance to  quell the unrest. 

Blake, 29, took at least half a dozen shots in the back in front of his small children as he tried to get into his car last Sunday, in an incident that triggered an outpouring of anger over yet another shooting of a black man by white police. 

During the rally against police brutality and racism on Saturday, his father, Jacob Blake Sr, called on protesters to refrain from looting and vandalism, which had overshadowed peaceful protests before a tense calm set in the past three nights.

‘Good people of this city understand. If we tear it up we have nothing,’ he told a gathering at a park that was the hub of protests in support of his son, Jacob Blake Jr. 

‘Stop it. Show ’em for one night we don’t have to tear up nothing.’

The shooting of Blake has turned the mostly white city of 100,000 people south of Milwaukee into the latest flashpoint in a summer of nationwide demonstrations against police brutality and racism.  

Blake will likely participate via video from his hospital room in a court hearing next week about criminal charges that predated the shooting, his lawyer told Reuters on Saturday, adding he would plead not guilty.

Anger at Blake’s shooting, captured on video that went viral, led to street skirmishes; protesters hurled firecrackers and bricks at police in riot gear who fired volleys of tear gas and rubber bullets.

On Tuesday night a white teenager with a semi-automatic rifle shot three demonstrators, and two of them died.

In Kenosha on Saturday, people painted messages of unity on boards protecting storefronts after many businesses were burned to the ground in arson attacks and vandalism.

Residents hoped calm would hold for a fourth night as protesters, some wearing ‘Justice for Jacob’ masks, spoke about the need for racial justice.

The 17-year-old suspect in Tuesday night’s killings, Kyle Rittenhouse, surrendered to police on Wednesday near his home in Illinois close to the Wisconsin border. 

Kenosha officials have been criticized for videos showing law enforcement agents giving him water before the burst of violence and acting chummy with armed militia men in the streets.  

Trump has repeatedly condemned the protests that have rocked the country since the death of George Floyd in May, as he presses a law and order message while fighting an uphill battle for re-election in November. 

He has not specifically commented on Rittenhouse or Blake.