Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser said in a recent interview that standing up against President Donald Trump’s efforts to increase street patrols was paramount to defending the borders of the District of Columbia from troops sent by the president.
The headline-grabbing mayor has been in a power struggle with Trump since the pair began to disagree on extra law enforcement in the nation’s capital in response to protesters who become violent.
Bowser made her comments on an episode of The New Normal with Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson, a podcast by The Daily Beast .
According to the publication, Bowser was asked what it was like to be “under siege” by the president of the United States.
“We have spent the last week trying to defend our borders, defend our autonomy, and make sure protesters could be in the city peacefully,” Bowser says.
In reference to the now-infamous clearing of Lafayette Park, the day after protesting became violent and just hours before the president crossed the street on foot, Bowser said that they really “don’t know for sure who was in charge, who gave the order, what the chain of command was.”
Bowser and protesters called out the administration for breaking up what was reported to be a thoroughly peaceful protest in front of the White House.
The show hosts and mayor also addressed the president’s jabs on Twitter, where he repeatedly called out the mayor, including saying that she was “incompetent,” as The Inquisitr previously reported.
“Not to sound like I’m in the kindergarten, but he started it,” Bowser said of her ongoing feud with the White House.
The mayor responded to Trump’s Twitter attacks speaking to a record-breaking crowd in Washington, D.C., at a rally protesting the death of George Floyd, where she contended that “our soldiers should not be treated this way.”
“They should not be asked to move on American citizens.”
Bowser resisted additional troops being added to the city’s police force from the beginning, and she said as much to the crowd gathered in the newly named Black Lives Matter Plaza on Saturday.
The mayor assured the crowd that she had written a letter to the White House asking Trump to immediately “withdraw all extraordinary federal law enforcement and military presence” from the city. She also stated that the curfew, which was enacted after extensive rioting, would soon be lifted and all extra law enforcement would be removed.