Trump again claims he “saved Kenosha,” but Evers sent troops first

While he was busy talking about crime and immigration at his June 18, 2024 rally in Racine, Wisconsin, former President Donald Trump turned his attention to Kenosha.

Kenosha — about 11 miles south of where Trump held his rally — was rocked by civil unrest in 2020 after a police officer shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, seven times. The officer was not criminally charged.

While some nights of protests saw looting, firebombing and violence, others were peaceful.

“I saved Kenosha, you know that?” Trump told the crowd. “I made it. Kenosha was about to go into the tube.”

“The governor wouldn’t move, he just wouldn’t move, and I moved,” he said. “You know, that’s not the intention. The governor is supposed to do it. The mayor and the governor.”

Trump has made similar claims before: that Kenosha would have been destroyed without him, and that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers was too late to send aid. In 2020, PolitiFact Wisconsin rated these claims as “Pants on Fire.”

There were three assumptions that also played a role in Trump’s latest claims we examined:

• Kenosha was headed for destruction.
• No other changes occurred that would have improved the situation in Kenosha.
• Trump alone is responsible for activating the National Guard.

In our 2020 fact-check, we found them all wrong. Let’s go through those again.

Protests took place in a limited area compared to the entire city

There is a big difference between protests that damage a limited area and destroy or change a large part of a city of 100,000 inhabitants, we noted during the fact check.

The protests, even at the height of the unrest on August 25, 2020, were largely concentrated in the one-acre Civic Park and a nearby area a few blocks wide, although people spread to nearby neighborhoods after the largest groups dispersed.

That drastically exaggerates the scale of the situation in Kenosha, a city of 18 square miles, even in its worst case scenario. That goes against Trump’s new statement that the city is “about to go down the tubes.”

Other factors besides the presence of the National Guard reduced the violence, including calls for peace

In 2020, Trump’s attempt to claim credit assumed that the presence of the National Guard was the only factor in the lack of violence after Kyle Rittenhouse shot three people and killed two.

Rittenhouse was later found not guilty on five counts, including intentional, reckless and attempted murder.

There were other reasons why the violence subsided afterward, including a change in who was in the crowd.

A group described by Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth as “a militia” and “vigilante group” had patrolled the streets of Kenosha for the first few nights after the Blake shooting, even standing guard on rooftops with long guns.

In the hours before the shooting, the Kenosha Guard put out a call on Facebook for “patriots who are willing to take up arms and defend City from the evil criminals tonight.” That page was removed by Facebook after the Rittenhouse shooting.

And the number of people wearing military gear and openly carrying weapons dropped dramatically after the night of chaos in which the shooting occurred, according to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporters on the scene in Kenosha.

Nevertheless, civilians with pistols were observed until the weekend.

During the height of the protests, vigilante groups and Black Lives Matter demonstrators frequently clashed, hurling insults or worse.

Removing half of that equation – for whatever reason – changed the situation dramatically.

In addition to a decline in the number of armed people, there were also calls for peace, including from Blake’s family, at marches and rallies, and – to varying degrees – from Evers and local officials.

Evers also declared a state of emergency and local officials took steps to better control the area, such as closing highway access. That was in addition to the increase in the number of troops, which also happened.

Trump did not send the National Guard, the state effort began before Trump spoke to officials in Wisconsin

That brings us to the last part of the claim, and something Trump noted again at his rally in Racine: that he was responsible for sending in the National Guard, and Evers failed to act.

The White House described itself as authorizing 2,000 National Guard troops to go to Kenosha. But Maj. Gen. Paul Knapp, who commanded the Wisconsin National Guard at the time, said that’s not really the way that system works.

He described it this way when asked what role the White House played in the Kenosha response.

“What I want to emphasize again is that the process is really a governor-governor agreement,” Knapp said.

“Through the (Emergency Management Assistance Compact) process, we had already started talking to other states (when the White House got involved), it’s one of the things we do right away during something like this.”

Each state has its own National Guard – as provided for in the Constitution – and the Guard plays a role at both the state and federal levels, according to the website.

Governors can call the National Guard into action during local or state emergencies. On August 24, 2020, Evers activated the Guard, less than 24 hours after Blake was shot. The Trump administration spoke with Evers on August 25, 2020.

The president can also activate the Guard for federal missions. Examples of federal missions given on the website include deployments to Kosovo or the counterterrorism efforts in the Middle East.

After the Rittenhouse shooting, Evers increased the number of National Guard troops from 250 to 500. Evers also accepted federal troops from the Trump administration after initially rejecting federal aid. We noted this during a related fact check in 2021.

Evers’ administration said the White House was offering help from the Department of Homeland Security, not the National Guard. Evers had refused because more Guard members had already been sent.

Our statement

At a rally in Racine, Trump made similar claims to what he said nearly four years ago: that he “saved Kenosha” and that the “governor would take no action” in sending in the National Guard.

In addition to the presence of the National Guard, other factors calmed the situation in Kenosha, including calls for peace and a reduction in the number of armed people.

Trump also said Kenosha was “about to go down the tubes,” though the protests were largely confined to an acre of the larger city — exaggerating the scale of the situation.

Finally, Trump was not responsible for sending the National Guard. The state-level efforts began even before his government got involved. His government did send federal troops, but Evers had already activated the National Guard before that.

Based on the findings from our previous fact checks, we are reassessing Trump’s Pants on Fire claims.

Sources

WisEye, Campaign 2024: Trump to Presidential Rally in Racine, June 18, 2024.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A Black man shot in the back, a viral video and civil unrest: Kenosha and the rest of the country are on edge after the latest police shooting, Jan. 5, 2021.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Prosecutor: No charges against Kenosha police officer Rusten Sheskey in the shooting of Jacob Blake, Jan. 5, 2021.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Kenosha update summary: August 26 and August 29, 2020 coverage.

PolitiFact Wisconsin, No, Trump doesn’t deserve credit for Kenosha de-escalation, September 1, 2020.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, White House says Governor Tony Evers has rejected federal aid to quell riots in Kenosha, August 26, 2024.

PolitiFact Wisconsin, No, Wis. Governor Evers didn’t wait to send aid to Kenosha during unrest, September 15, 2021.