“I saw Trump’s speech on TV last night and he stood in front of this church and held up a Bible and acted like that would fix everything, and it just made it worse to me,” said Celete Kato, a Washington resident, as cars driving by Lafayette Square honked in support. She said Trump is actually “galvanizing this Black Lives Matter voice to want to do better and be better and respond in a more coordinated way. So maybe he’s helping the cause.”…

Jay Hamilton, a 45-year-old D.C. resident who was at the protest on Tuesday, thinks the heavy-handedness of the police has provoked the riots. “This is America, right? America’s all teams. So depending on the team that you’re on, that’s how you’re going to see [the riots]. For me, it’s not [detracting from the peaceful protests], it’s part of the protest,” he said.

He pointed to the gate around the park as an example of law enforcement provoking protesters into violence, arguing it was unnecessary to put it up. As he spoke, a line of troopers armed in riot gear moved through the protesters. People in the crowd jeered. “Why [do] they even send those guys down the block like that? That’s that bullshit right there.”