White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows suggested Sunday that federal law enforcement intervention could come to Milwaukee.
It was not clear whether that meant deploying federal agents like those who were in Portland, Oregon, detaining protesters last week.
The presence of federal agents in unmarked cars wearing uniforms that identified them only as "police" has drawn criticism from officials in Oregon, including the state's attorney general who filed a lawsuit accusing the federal government of unlawfully detaining people protesting police brutality.
In an appearance on Maria Bartiromo's program "Sunday Morning Futures" on the Fox News Channel, Meadows was asked if an executive order from the president was coming for "returning law and order to this country."
Meadows replied that some of the unrest in the last month as well as in the previous week in Portland was not acceptable "when you look at communities not being safe and not upholding the rule of law.”
Meadows said Attorney General William Barr and Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf are looking into the issue.
"You'll see something rolled out this week as we start to go in and make sure that the communities, whether it's Chicago, or Portland, or Milwaukee, or someplace across the heartland of the country, we need to make sure their communities are safe," Meadows said.
He was not specific about what that might mean.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reached out to spokeswomen for Gov. Tony Evers, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul and the White House and did not get replies Sunday. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett was unavailable for comment.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reached out to spokeswomen for Gov. Tony Evers, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul and the White House and did not get replies Sunday. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett was unavailable for comment.
Milwaukee is hosting a drastically scaled back Democratic National Convention in four weeks.
Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes criticized Meadows' comments on Sunday.
"There is no point to this. It’s about poll numbers," Barnes wrote on Twitter. "It’s Trump (virtually) signaling, potentially with force, to his base who already has opinions about Milwaukee because he’s down by so many points in the state. It’s an election strategy to drive an even deeper divide in Wisconsin."
Trump has been polling behind presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in Wisconsin. In a Marquette University Law School poll last month, Biden led Trump 49% to 41% among registered voters in Wisconsin.
Journal Sentinel reporter Molly Beck contributed to this report.
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