U.S. President Donald Trump defied requests to stay away and visited Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, not to urge racial healing after a white officer shot a Black man in the back but to express support for law enforcement in a city rocked by civil unrest.
With the United States polarized over issues of racial injustice and police use of force, Trump is appealing to his base of white supporters with a "law and order" message as opinion polls show him cutting into the lead of his Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.
Meanwhile Trump has largely overlooked the racial wounds caused by police use of force and played down the more than 180,000 U.S. deaths from the coronavirus pandemic.