Military in control of Bangladesh after Hasina flees

Military in control of Bangladesh after Hasina flees
People celebrate the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on August 5, 2024. (REUTERS)
Short Url
Updated 06 August 2024
Follow

Military in control of Bangladesh after Hasina flees

Military in control of Bangladesh after Hasina flees
  • Hasina stepped down as PM after violent protests in Bangladesh claimed at least 300 lives since last month 
  • Protesters stormed parliament, torched TV stations while some smashed statues of Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman

DHAKA: Bangladesh’s military was in control of the country on Tuesday after mass protests forced longtime ruler Sheikh Hasina to resign and flee.

Hasina, 76, had been in power since 2009 but was accused of rigging elections in January and then watched millions of people take to the streets over the past month demanding she step down.

Hundreds of people died as security forces sought to quell the unrest, but the protests grew and Hasina finally fled Bangladesh aboard a helicopter on Monday as the military turned against her.

Army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman announced Monday afternoon on state television that Hasina had resigned and the military would form a caretaker government.

“The country has suffered a lot, the economy has been hit, many people have been killed — it is time to stop the violence,” said Waker, shortly after jubilant crowds stormed and looted Hasina’s official residence.

Millions of Bangladeshis flooded the streets of Dhaka after Waker’s announcement.

“I feel so happy that our country has been liberated,” said Sazid Ahnaf, 21, comparing the events to the independence war that split the nation from Pakistan more than five decades ago.

“We have been freed from a dictatorship. It’s a Bengal uprising, what we saw in 1971, and now seeing in 2024.”

But there were also scenes of chaos and anger, with police reporting at least 66 people killed on Monday as mobs launched revenge attacks on Hasina’s allies.

Protesters stormed parliament and torched TV stations, while some smashed statues of Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s independence hero.

Others set a museum dedicated to the former leader on fire, flames licking at portraits in destruction barely thinkable just hours before, when Hasina had the loyalty of the security forces under her autocratic grip.

“The time has come to make them accountable for torture,” said protester Kaza Ahmed. “Sheikh Hasina is responsible for murder.”

Offices of Hasina’s Awami League across the country were torched and looted, eyewitnesses told AFP.

The unrest began last month in the form of protests against civil service job quotas and then escalated into wider calls for Hasina to stand down.

Her government was accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including through the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

At least 366 people died in the unrest that began in early July, according to an AFP tally based on police, government officials and doctors at hospitals.

Student protest leaders, ahead of an expected meeting with the army chief, said Tuesday that they wanted Nobel laureate and microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus, 84, to lead the government.

“In Dr. Yunus, we trust,” Asif Mahmud, a key leader of the Students Against Discrimination (SAD) group, wrote on Facebook.

Waker said a curfew would be lifted on Tuesday morning, with the military set to lead an interim government.

Bangladeshi President Mohammed Shahabuddin late Monday ordered the release of prisoners from the protests, as well as former prime minister and key opposition leader Khaleda Zia, 78.

Zia, who is in poor health, was jailed by her arch-rival Hasina for graft in 2018.

The president and army chief also met late Monday, alongside key opposition leaders, with the president’s press team saying it had been “decided to form an interim government immediately.”

It was not immediately clear if Waker would lead it.

Hasina’s fate was also uncertain. She fled the country by helicopter, a source close to the ousted leader told AFP.

Media in neighboring India reported Hasina had landed at a military air base near New Delhi.

A top-level source said she wanted to “transit” on to London, but calls by the British government for a UN-led investigation into “unprecedented levels of violence” put that into doubt.

There were widespread calls by protesters to ensure Hasina’s close allies remained in the country.

Bangladesh’s military said they had shut Dhaka’s international airport on Monday evening, without giving a reason.

Bangladesh has a long history of coups.

The military declared an emergency in January 2007 after widespread political unrest and installed a military-backed caretaker government for two years.

Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Washington-based Wilson Center, warned that Hasina’s departure “would leave a major vacuum” and that the country was in “uncharted territory.”

“The coming days are critical,” he said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stressed the importance of a “peaceful, orderly and democratic transition,” his spokesman said. European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell echoed that call.

Former colonial ruler Britain and the United States meanwhile urged “calm.”


Boeing’s Starliner astronauts could return on SpaceX capsule in February 2025, NASA says

Boeing’s Starliner astronauts could return on SpaceX capsule in February 2025, NASA says
Updated 11 sec ago
Follow

Boeing’s Starliner astronauts could return on SpaceX capsule in February 2025, NASA says

Boeing’s Starliner astronauts could return on SpaceX capsule in February 2025, NASA says
  • The astronauts’ test mission, initially expected to last about eight days on the station, has been drawn out by issues on Starliner’s propulsion system
  • The latest test data have stirred disagreements and debate within NASA about whether to accept the risk of a Starliner return to Earth
WASHINGTON: NASA officials said on Wednesday the two astronauts delivered to the International Space Station in June by Boeing’s Starliner could return on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon in February 2025 if Starliner is still deemed unsafe to return to Earth.
The US space agency has been discussing potential plans with SpaceX to leave two seats empty on an upcoming Crew Dragon launch for NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who became the first crew to fly Boeing’s Starliner capsule.
The astronauts’ test mission, initially expected to last about eight days on the station, has been drawn out by issues on Starliner’s propulsion system that have increasingly called into question the spacecraft’s ability to safely return them to Earth as planned.
A Boeing spokesperson said if NASA decides to change Starliner’s mission, the company “will take the actions necessary to configure Starliner for an uncrewed return.”
Thruster failures during Starliner’s initial approach to the ISS in June and several leaks of helium — used to pressurize those thrusters — have set Boeing off on a testing campaign to understand the cause and propose fixes to NASA, which has the final say. Recent results have unearthed new information, causing greater alarm about a safe return.
The latest test data have stirred disagreements and debate within NASA about whether to accept the risk of a Starliner return to Earth, or make the call to use Crew Dragon instead.
Using a SpaceX craft to return astronauts that Boeing had planned to bring back on Starliner would be a major blow to an aerospace giant that has struggled for years to compete with SpaceX and its more experienced Crew Dragon.
Starliner has been docked to the ISS for 63 of the maximum 90 days it can stay, and it is parked at the same port that Crew Dragon will have to use to deliver the upcoming astronaut crew.
Early Tuesday morning, NASA, using a SpaceX rocket and a Northrop Grumman capsule, delivered a routine shipment of food and supplies to the station, including extra clothes for Wilmore and Williams.
Starliner’s high-stakes mission is a final test required before NASA can certify the spacecraft for routine astronaut flights to and from the ISS. Crew Dragon received NASA approval for astronaut flights in 2020.
Starliner development has been set back by management issues and numerous engineering problems. It has cost Boeing $1.6 billion since 2016, including $125 million from Starliner’s current test mission, securities filings show.
CONCERNS AT NASA
A meeting this week of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which oversees Starliner, ended with some officials disagreeing with a plan to accept Boeing’s testing data and use Starliner to bring the astronauts home, officials said during a news conference.
“We didn’t poll in a way that led to a conclusion,” Commercial Crew Program chief Steve Stich said.
“We heard from a lot of folks that had concerns, and the decision was not clear,” Ken Bowersox, NASA’s space operations chief, added.
A Boeing executive was not at the Wednesday press conference.
While no decision has been made on using Starliner or Crew Dragon, NASA has been buying Boeing more time to do more testing and gather more data to build a better case to trust Starliner. Sometime next week is when NASA expects to decide, officials said.
The agency on Tuesday delayed by more than a month SpaceX’s upcoming Crew Dragon mission, a routine flight called Crew-9, that is expected to send three NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut to the ISS.
NASA’s ISS program chief said the agency has not yet decided which astronauts they would pull off the mission for Wilmore and Williams if needed.
Boeing’s testing so far has shown that four of Starliner’s jets had failed in June because they overheated and automatically turned off, while other thrusters re-fired during tests appeared weaker than normal because of some restriction to their propellant.
Ground tests in late July at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico have helped reveal that the thrusters’ overheating causes a teflon seal to warp, choking propellant tubes for the thrusters and thereby weakening their thrust.
“That, I would say, upped the level of discomfort, and not having a total understanding of the physics of what’s happening,” Stich said, describing why NASA now appears more willing to discuss a Crew Dragon contingency after previously downplaying such a prospect to reporters.

‘Feeling terrorized’: Muslims in famously left-leaning Liverpool shocked by UK riots

‘Feeling terrorized’: Muslims in famously left-leaning Liverpool shocked by UK riots
Updated 53 min 15 sec ago
Follow

‘Feeling terrorized’: Muslims in famously left-leaning Liverpool shocked by UK riots

‘Feeling terrorized’: Muslims in famously left-leaning Liverpool shocked by UK riots
  • Muslims report feeling shock after riots, other ethnic minorities say they are worried too
  • Muslim population in England and Wales stood at 3.9 million, or 6.5% of the total, as of 2021

LIVERPOOL, England: For Liverpool’s biggest mosque, it’s been a week of firsts.

Most entrances have been blocked, men in high-vis jackets have been taking turns to patrol and a handful of worshippers have been sleeping inside at night — all necessary precautions, say officials at the Al-Rahma Mosque, during the UK’s worst riots in years.

The increased vigilance comes as some Muslims and ethnic minorities in Liverpool say they feel unsafe amid widespread violent, racist protests targeting mosques, immigration centers and hotels that haven’t spared the famously left-leaning city in the north of England.

Both mosque officials and other Muslims in Liverpool described feeling shocked, after two mosques further north in England were targeted by violent mobs and hundreds of anti-immigration protesters and counterprotesters clashed in central

Liverpool. Shops were looted and some police were injured.

A second mosque in Liverpool, the Abdullah Quilliam, which describes itself as Britain’s first, has temporarily closed due to the violence, which was fueled by a false narrative spread online that the killer of three girls in nearby Southport last week was an Islamist migrant.

“I was born here, I was raised here. So seeing this, it just doesn’t feel like home,” said Abdulwase Sufian, a 20-year-old student who helps at the Al-Rahma, referring to himself as a “Scouser,” the colloquial term for someone from Liverpool.

“Seeing what’s happened, it’s gotten me scared, not just for myself, but for the future,” he said, the yellow dome and pink-and-yellow minarets of the Al-Rahma behind him as dozens of men finished afternoon prayers and left.

Sufian added that the separate female entrance for the mosque, which serves a wide range of Muslims from ethnic Yemeni to Pakistani, had been closed to discourage women from visiting in the evenings, out of safety concerns.

He himself hasn’t stepped outside his immediate neighborhood out of fears for his safety, Sufian said, a sentiment echoed by others in the community.

FEELING TERRIFIED

Saba Ahmed, a community worker and another Liverpudlian Muslim, said she had felt “terrified” in recent days, and her 15-year-old son was preferring to spend his summer holidays indoors on his PlayStation.

Still, many of Ahmed’s white English friends had been supportive, she said, with some neighbors offering to do the grocery shopping for her so she could remain safe at home.

“That’s our people in Liverpool, that’s our fellow neighbors here,” she said.

Others have been less fortunate.

Farmanullah Nasiri, a taxi driver, described being assaulted after picking up two passengers from Aigburth Road, Liverpool, in the early hours of Tuesday.

One of them, a woman, punched him on the face and broke his dashcam as she left his silver Ford Focus, after starting an argument over the fare and after abusing him once she learnt he was an ethnic Afghan, Nasiri said.

Nasiri, 28, says he did not file a police complaint.

A video shot at 0120 GMT on his iPhone showed a broken dashcam and blood above his right eye. Reuters was not able to verify his account of how it happened.

“This is kind of a racism ... Been here for more than 10 years in Liverpool. Everybody’s friendly. There’s no issue like this before. This is the first time,” Nasiri said.

Tell MAMA, a group which monitors anti-Muslim incidents, has received over 500 calls and online reports of anti-Muslim behavior from across the UK in the past week, a five-fold increase from the week before, its director Iman Atta told Reuters, describing Muslim communities as “terrorized.”

Anti-Muslim hate has been growing in the UK even before the start of the riots, and particularly after the start of the conflict in Gaza last year, the group says.

Over one in four in a survey of 550 British Muslims last month said they had faced an anti-Muslim hate incident in the last year, Tell MAMA said.

‘NOT JUST MUSLIMS’

Amid all the tension, Muslim community leaders are advising calm, at a time when many young men in the community might feel tempted to respond.

Footage from Sky News earlier this week showed a large group of mostly Asian men with Palestinian flags gathering in an area of Birmingham following rumors of a far-right protest at the site, which did not materialize. Police said a man was assaulted and a pub window was smashed, and have charged one man for possession of an offensive weapon.

The rival, counter protests have included both White and non-White people describing themselves as anti-racist, anti-fascist or pro-Palestinian. Sometimes extreme left-wing anarchists have also taken part.

Community leaders are discouraging such gatherings.

“We don’t want these counter protests or these large groups of young people turning up because that’s the spark that we don’t need ... so we need to be very careful,” said Sajjad Amin, trustee of the UKIM Khizra Mosque in Manchester, 30 miles (50 km) from Liverpool.

Some Muslim leaders recounted tensions being defused.

Adam Kelwick, an imam at the temporarily-closed Abdullah Quilliam mosque, said it had been “prepared for the worst” when anti-immigration demonstrators gathered outside last week, but protesters calmed down after offers of food and dialogue.

“All it took was a few burgers and some chips and some genuine intention from our side,” he said, speaking from near the chained up gates of the Victorian-era mosque.

The Muslim population in England and Wales stood at 3.9 million people, or 6.5 percent of the total, as of 2021.

The heightened tension has unnerved both that community and others. On Tuesday evening rumors of a far-right gathering prompted shops on Lawrence Road to down their shutters early.

Local resident Santhosh Thomas, an ethnic Indian, helped chain up two large metal road signs to the fence of a nearby church, to discourage their use as weapons.

He said his brown skin made him a target, regardless of his religion. “It’s not just Muslims ... everyone is scared,” Thomas said, as a police van arrived on Lawrence Road.


New Zealand and Australia trade barbs over accent and language in row over Maori words

New Zealand and Australia trade barbs over accent and language in row over Maori words
Updated 08 August 2024
Follow

New Zealand and Australia trade barbs over accent and language in row over Maori words

New Zealand and Australia trade barbs over accent and language in row over Maori words
  • Prime minister: Not a snub of the Indigenous language by New Zealand’s government
  • It instead reflects the ‘incredibly simple’ language required when speaking to Australians

WELLINGTON: The removal of basic Maori phrases meaning “hello” and “New Zealand” from a Maori lunar new year invitation to an Australian official was not a snub of the Indigenous language by New Zealand’s government, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said Wednesday, seemingly joking that it instead reflected the “incredibly simple” language required when speaking to Australians.
Luxon’s defense in Parliament of the lawmaker who ordered the removal of the Maori words from an invitation sent to Australia’s arts minister was an attempt to rebuff criticism that his government is anti-Maori, as it seeks to reverse policies favoring Indigenous people and language.
The prime minister appeared to indulge in a favorite pastime of New Zealanders, who enjoy a friendly rivalry with their closest neighbor: calling Australians stupid.
“In my dealings with Australians, it always pays to be incredibly simple and clear and use English,” Luxon said, referring to the invitation sent to Tony Burke.
Ripostes between lawmakers across the Tasman have precedent. In the most famous example, a New Zealand leader, Rob Muldoon, quipped in the 1980s that New Zealanders who migrate to Australia “raise the IQ of both countries.”
On Thursday, a smiling Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese responded to Luxon with a favorite Australian joke — that no one can understand the New Zealand accent.
He said that at times interpreters were needed, perhaps diplomatically adding that he had sometimes “missed” things said by Luxon’s predecessors too.
“Look, we’re great friends and we’re great mates,” the Australian leader said. “Sometimes though we do speak a different language and that’s when we both think we’re speaking English.”
The exchange offered a diversion in an otherwise tense session of New Zealand’s Parliament, which has been roiled by accusations of bullying, racism and insults in recent weeks, with lawmakers in tears and the prime minister urging “all political leaders to watch their rhetoric.”
During Question Time, Luxon was asked by opposition leader Chris Hipkins about a series of inflammatory remarks he said lawmakers had recently made.
Among them was the report that New Zealand’s arts, culture and heritage minister, Paul Goldsmith — who signed off on the new year invitation — had directed officials to remove some Maori phrases from the materials, according to documents divulged by 1News.
They included “tena koe” — a formal way to say hello, learned by New Zealand children in their first year of elementary school — and “Aotearoa,” a commonplace Maori name for New Zealand.
“I just didn’t think it needed a lot of te reo in it,” Goldsmith told 1News, using a phrase meaning the Maori language, an official one of New Zealand. The language was once close to dying out, but activists provoked a revival over several decades, and common Maori words or phrases are now in everyday use among all New Zealanders.
The same movement prompted a revival of Matariki, the Maori lunar new year, which was established as a nationwide public holiday in 2020.
Since assuming office after the 2023 election, Luxon’s coalition government has prompted fraught public debates about race. One was over a return to English names for government agencies, many of which had assumed Maori titles in recent years.
Another was over ending initiatives that offer priority to Maori, who lag behind other New Zealanders in most health, economic and justice statistics.
Protesters gathered outside Parliament in the capital, Wellington, this week to oppose the government’s plans to repeal a clause requiring recognition of children’s Maori heritage from the law governing the child protection system.
A spokesperson for Burke, the Australian recipient of the controversial invitation, said on Thursday that he had known the meaning of the word Aotearoa since 1982, when it was referenced in the lyrics of a popular song by the New Zealand band Split Enz.

The Yazidi nightmare
Ten years after the genocide, their torment continues
Enter
keywords

Bangladesh awaits installation of interim government after weeks of strife

Bangladesh awaits installation of interim government after weeks of strife
Updated 08 August 2024
Follow

Bangladesh awaits installation of interim government after weeks of strife

Bangladesh awaits installation of interim government after weeks of strife
  • Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus expected to be sworn in as chief adviser along with a team of advisers later on Thursday
  • Sheikh Hasina’s dramatic exit on Monday triggered jubilation and violence across Bangladesh

DHAKA: Bangladesh is set to get a new, interim government headed by Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus on Thursday, after weeks of tumultuous student protests forced Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign and flee to India.
Yunus, 84, Bangladesh’s only Nobel laureate and a harsh critic of Hasina, was recommended for the job by the student protesters who led the campaign against Hasina.
He was expected to be sworn in as chief adviser along with a team of advisers later on Thursday in an interim government which the army chief said may include 15 members, although discussions on the names continued till late on Wednesday.
Hasina’s Awami League party was not involved in all-party discussions led by army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman, who announced Hasina’s resignation on Monday.
Her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy said in a Facebook post late on Wednesday that the party had not given up yet and was ready to hold talks with opponents and the administration.
“I had said my family will no longer be involved in politics but the way our party leaders and workers are being attacked, we cannot give up,” Joy said.
Yunus is known as the ‘banker to the poor’ and was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for founding a bank that pioneered fighting poverty with small loans to needy borrowers.
He is due to arrive in the capital Dhaka from Paris on Thursday, where he had been receiving medical treatment.
“I’m looking forward to going back home and see what’s happening there and how we can organize ourselves to get out of the trouble that we’re in,” Yunus said before he boarded a flight on Wednesday evening.
Hasina’s dramatic exit on Monday from the country she ruled for four terms — and was reelected to a fifth in January — triggered jubilation and violence across Bangladesh, as crowds stormed and ransacked her official residence unopposed.
She fled to neighboring India where she is taking shelter at an air base near the capital New Delhi.
Student protests against quotas for government jobs spiralled in July, killing about 300 people and injuring thousands, as demonstrations were met with a violent crackdown that was criticized internationally although the government denied using excessive force.
The protests were fueled by tough economic conditions and political repression as well.
After years of strong growth as the garment industry expanded, the $450 billion economy struggled with costly imports, inflation and unemployment and the government had sought a bailout from the International Monetary Fund.
Yunus and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Hasina’s main political opponent, called for calm and an end to violence on Wednesday.
“No destruction, revenge or vengeance,” said Hasina’s arch rival and BNP leader Khaleda Zia, 78, in a video address from her hospital bed to hundreds of her supporters at a rally in Dhaka on Wednesday.
Zia, who was released from house arrest on Tuesday, and her exiled son Tarique Rahman, addressed the rally and called for national elections to be held within three months.
On Wednesday, a court overturned Yunus’ conviction in a labor case in which he was handed a six-month jail sentence in January. Yunus had called his prosecution political, part of a campaign by Hasina to quash dissent.
“Let us make the best use of our new victory,” Yunus said.

The Yazidi nightmare
Ten years after the genocide, their torment continues
Enter
keywords

Trump praised Minnesota Gov. Walz in 2020 for response to unrest over Floyd’s murder, audio shows

Trump praised Minnesota Gov. Walz in 2020 for response to unrest over Floyd’s murder, audio shows
Updated 08 August 2024
Follow

Trump praised Minnesota Gov. Walz in 2020 for response to unrest over Floyd’s murder, audio shows

Trump praised Minnesota Gov. Walz in 2020 for response to unrest over Floyd’s murder, audio shows
  • “What they did in Minneapolis was incredible. They went in and dominated, and it happened immediately,” Trump told Walz and other governors and officials in a phone call on June 1, 2020
  • Protests erupted in Minneapolis and around the world after Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin, a white former officer who knelt on the Black man’s neck on May 25, 2020

MINNEAPOLIS: While former President Donald Trump and running mate JD Vance have been hammering Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz over his response to the violence that erupted after George Floyd’s murder, Trump told the governor at the time that he fully agreed with how Walz handled it.
“What they did in Minneapolis was incredible. They went in and dominated, and it happened immediately,” Trump told Walz and other governors and officials in a phone call on June 1, 2020. The Associated Press on Wednesday obtained an audio recording of the call, which has taken on new significance now that Walz has been tapped as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate against Trump and Vance.
Other administration officials on the call included Defense Secretary Mark Esper; Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Attorney General William Barr.
ABC News reported on the call earlier Wednesday, a day after Harris introduced Walz as her vice presidential pick. CNN posted a transcript of the call back in 2020.

George Floyd died after being restrained by police in Minneapolis. (AFP/File)

Protests erupted in Minneapolis and around the world after Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin, a white former officer who knelt on the Black man’s neck for nearly 9 1/2 minutes, on May 25, 2020. A bystander video captured Floyd’s fading cries of “I can’t breathe.” His death forced a reckoning with police brutality and racism. Some of the protests turned violent.
Walz mobilized the Minnesota National Guard three days later to help restore order to Minneapolis after rioting that included the burning of a police station and numerous businesses. Trump offered federal help to Walz later that day, but the governor did not take him up on it.
During a May 2024 fundraiser in St. Paul, Trump repeated a claim he had been making lately that he was responsible for deploying the National Guard. “The entire city was burning down. ... If you didn’t have me as president, you wouldn’t have Minneapolis today,” Trump told a Republican audience. Trump made similar claims at a rally in St. Cloud last month.
It was actually Walz who gave the mobilization order in response to requests from the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Although Walz came under criticism at the time for not moving faster. There was finger-pointing between Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Walz on who bore responsibility for the delays.
Trump, in the June 1, 2020, call, described Walz as “an excellent guy” and later said: “I don’t blame you. I blame the mayor.” The president didn’t criticize the governor at the time.
“Tim, you called up big numbers and the big numbers knocked them out so fast, it was like bowling pins,” Trump said.
But Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt put a different spin on the call in a statement to the AP on Wednesday.
“Governor Walz allowed Minneapolis to burn for days, despite President Trump’s offer to deploy soldiers and cries for help from the liberal Mayor of Minneapolis,” Leavitt said. “In this daily briefing phone call with Governors on June 1, days after the riots began, President Trump acknowledged Governor Walz for FINALLY taking action to deploy the National Guard to end the violence in the city.”
Walz did thank Trump on the call, as well as Esper and Milley, “for your strategic guidance, very helpful. ... Yeah, our city is grieving and in pain.”