The brother of George Floyd said Saturday that he spoke to President Donald Trump but the conversation was so quick that he “he didn't give me the opportunity to even speak.”
“It was hard, I was trying to talk to him, but he just kept pushing me off like ‘I don’t want to hear what you are talking about,”’ Philonise Floyd told MSNBC’s Al Sharpton.
“I just told him I want justice. I said that I can't believe that they committed a modern-day lynching in broad daylight.”
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Floyd said he also spoke to Joe Biden and poured out his heart to the Democratic presidential candidate.
“I never begged for anything before,” Floyd told Sharpton. “I asked the vice president if he could get justice for my brother. I just don’t want to see him on a shirt like those other guys.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Philonise’s characterization of the call.
The death of George Floyd after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes has sparked massive protests across the U.S., with some of them descending into violent standoffs with police, vandalism and looting.
That officer, Derek Chauvin, has been fired and charged with third-degree murder. But Philonise Floyd said he should charged with first-degree murder, and that the other officers a the scene should also be charged.
“They all need to be convicted of first-degree murder and given the death penalty,” Philonise Floyd said Saturday. “They didn’t care what they wanted to do with my brother. He was scum, he was nothing.”
The other officers—Thomas Lane, Tou Thao, and J. Alexander Kueng—have not yet been charged, though officials have said they expect more charges are coming.
Trump, meanwhile, headed to Florida for the launch of SpaceX as the nation braced for another night of unrest and protesters massed outside the White House. Demonstrators pushed security barricades down Pennsylvania Avenue and clashed with police officers carrying shields.
Protesters were seen standing on top of Secret Service cars and a security booth next to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. In a series of tweets earlier Saturday, Trump had complimented the U.S. Secret Service for protecting him inside the White House Friday evening against the protesters that gathered outside—before insinuating that his own supporters might stage their own rally outside the president's home on Saturday.
On Friday evening, protests spurred across more than 30 U.S. cities, prompting officials in several states called in historic levels of reinforcement on Saturday in what is expected to be another night of chaos and destruction.
