President Trump Tells The Nation's Governors: 'You Have To Dominate'

Published: Monday, June 1, 2020 - 3:30pm
Updated: Tuesday, June 2, 2020 - 8:23am

After days of consecutive protests in cities across the globe, including in the Phoenix area, President Donald Trump on Monday took to the phone and told the nation’s governors they need to dominate.

Audio of the call was obtained by the Washington Post.

Trump said early on in the call, “We have all the men and women that you need, but people aren’t calling them up. You have to dominate. If you don’t dominate you’re wasting your time. They’re gonna run over you. You’re gonna look like a bunch of jerks. You have to dominate.”

Gov. Doug Ducey was on the call and said he met with community leaders from around the state on Sunday and heard all their concerns, saying some lessons were learned over the last three days.

During part of the call, Ducey seemed to take Trump’s lead. “The more aggressive approach does work. We wanted peaceful protesters to be able to exercise their First Amendment rights. We had a tough time after the sun went down figuring out who was the peaceful protester and who was the person who was going to cause trouble, destroy property or begin violent actions,” he said.

Ducey went on to cite his statewide weeklong curfew that went into effect Sunday night and rolling out the National Guard as well as getting all mayors on board.  

Despite the fact there were more than 200 arrests in Phoenix for curfew violations and rioting Sunday night, Ducey ended his portion of the call by saying, “last night was a very peaceful, quiet night in the state of Arizona.”  

Politics