Republican senator: Trump inflaming US tensions

US President Donald Trump is attempting to “further inflame racial tensions” amid protests against police brutality and racial injustice, says a top Republican senator.

“The comments and tweets over the past few days, including a retweet of a 2019 video clearly intended to further inflame racial tensions, are simply jaw-dropping,” Utah Republican Senator Mitt Romney told The New York Times to become the only Republican senator to talk about the president’s comments and tweets in recent days.

Trump had retweeted a video showing a Black man shoving a white woman into a New York subway train in 2019.

“If the leader comments, I’ll be sure to pass it along,” said a spokesman for GOP Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

The situation has become tense in some US cities after the August 23 shooting of an African American by a white policeman in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Jacob Blake was shot multiple times in the back and left paralyzed.

Trump visited Kenosha on Tuesday, promising to increase funding to the city’s police force.

A top critic of the president, Romney is among the only Republicans in the Senate that speaks against his decisions, including a pardon for his longtime friend, Roger Stone.

"Unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president," Romney tweeted in July.

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