Mercedes Schlapp, a senior advisor to President Trump’s re-election campaign, apologized over the weekend for sharing a video of a man wielding a chainsaw against protestors and saying the N-word.
Schlapp told Fox News Sunday, “I retweeted without watching the full video and I deeply apologize. I deleted the tweet. I would never knowingly promote the use of that word. The intent was that these protestors wanted to call the cops for their own safety despite them wanting to defund the cops.”
The video, posted Friday, shows a man in Texas warning protesters not to let black people “fool” them. He tells the protesters, who are demonstrating against police brutality in the wake of the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, to “go home.” Instead of “black people,” he uses a racial slur and profanities.
CBS reports that the chainsaw-wielding man was identified as Daniel Pena and taken into custody.
Unrest has roiled the country since Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers on Memorial Day.
Demonstrators have demanded accountability, justice and, in some cases, the disbanding of police forces. In Minneapolis, city council members have been informing the public via Twitter that they are looking into doing just that. Ward 3 councilmember Steve Fletcher tweeted last week, “Several of us on the council are working on finding out what it would take to disband the MPD and start fresh with a community-oriented, non-violent public safety and outreach capacity.”