Trump sends mixed messages in Boston response


President Trump responded on Twitter Saturday afternoon to the Boston counter-protest against a rally with ties to the white nationalists in Charlottesville. In his first two tweets on the subject, Trump praised Boston police and took a low view of the counter-protest crowd:
Then, later Saturday, he took a more positive view of the counter-protest:
Boston police arrested 33 people at the counter-protest Saturday, which was estimated to have as many as 40,000 people denouncing the "Boston Free Speech" rally, which drew about 20 people. Though a few counter-protesters were arrested for throwing debris at officers, Boston's police commissioner said injury and property damage were minimal because "99.9 percent of the people here were for the right reasons."
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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