Pritzker Blasts Trump 'Rhetoric,' Trump Fires Back On Call

ILLINOIS — Gov. J.B. Pritzker pushed back against President Donald Trump's "inflammatory" rhetoric on a call Monday morning with state and federal officials.

The president spoke for nearly an hour about the unrest sweeping the country in response to the killing of an African American man in Minneapolis last week. George Floyd, 46, died after a police officer placed a knee on his neck as Floyd pleaded that he couldn't breathe, according to video of the incident. A private autopsy commissioned by Floyd's family found he died of "asphyxia due to neck and back compression," the Washington Post reported Monday.

"We've called out our National Guard and our state police, but the rhetoric that's coming out of the White House is making it worse," Pritzker told the president, according to audio obtained by the Washington Post. "And I need to say that people are feeling real pain out there, and we've got to have national leadership in calling for calm and making sure that we're addressing the concerns of the legitimate, peaceful protesters. That will help us to bring order."

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"OK, well thank you very much, J.B.," Trump told Pritzker. "I don't like your rhetoric much either."

Rather than calling for calm or addressing the protesters' concerns as Pritzker asked, Trump referred to the protesters as "antifa," "radical left" and "professional anarchists."

"These are terrorists," Trump said, promising a police and military crackdown on the call, which included military commanders, the attorney general and the governors of several states.

"The situation going on, it shouldn't be hard to take care of, and we're going to take care of it," Trump continued.

"We're strongly looking for arrests," the president said, encouraging governors to deploy the military against protesters. "You have to get much tougher. ... We have all the men and women that you need, but people aren't calling them up. You have to dominate. If you don't dominate, you're wasting your time. They're going to run over you, and you're going to look like a bunch of jerks."

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper likewise encouraged governors to quickly mass National Guard troops and "dominate the battlespace."

"It's like we're talking about a war, which it is a war in a certain sense," Trump said later in the call, shortly after praising Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota for deploying the Guard in his state and knocking the protesters "out so fast it was like bowling pins."

At one point, Trump spoke of 2011's Occupy Wall Street movement, which began in New York's Zuccotti Park but quickly spread to other cities around the country, including Chicago.

"Go back and study Occupy Wall Street. 'Cause you'll see the way that ended was a thing of beauty," Trump said. "Everybody said, 'I can't believe how easy it was.' It was an hour of bedlam, but when it was all over, it was a beautiful thing. And that's the way it has to end for you."

The president spent part of Friday night in a bunker beneath the White House after demonstrators threatened to overrun barricades in nearby Lafayette Park, according to the Associated Press. The same report said the president has told advisers he is worried about his safety amid the protests.

"We need law and order in our country," Trump said on the call. "And if we don't have law and order, we don't have a country. So we need law and order."