In United States after Sunday’s incident when police resorted to firing tear gas outside the White House to disperse the protestors, President Donald Trump on Monday said he was deploying thousands of “heavily armed” soldiers and police to prevent further protests in Washington, where buildings and monuments have been vandalized near the White House.

The national capital was erupted with anti-racism demonstrators taking to the streets to voice fury at police brutality against the killing of George Floyd, leading to violent clashes.

“What happened in the city last night was a total disgrace,” he said during a nationwide address.

“I am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel and law enforcement officers to stop the rioting, looting, vandalism, assaults and the wanton destruction of property,” Trump added.

He denounced “acts of domestic terror” after nationwide protests against the death of an unarmed African American George Floyd in police custody devolved into days of violent race riots across the country.

“I want the organizers of this terror to be on notice that you will face severe criminal penalties and a lengthy sentences in jail,” Trump said as police could be heard using tear gas and stun grenades to clear protestors just outside the White House.

He also called on state governors to “deploy the National Guard in sufficient numbers that we dominate the streets” before heading on foot for a photo op at the riot-damaged St. John’s, the two-century-old “church of the presidents” across from the White House.

Floyd, an unarmed 46-year-old man, died in Minneapolis on May 25 after Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, held him down with a knee on his neck though he repeatedly pleaded, “I can’t breathe”, and “please, I can’t breathe”.

All four police officers involved in the incident have been fired, and Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.

One week after Floyd died in Minneapolis, an autopsy blamed his videotaped death squarely on a white police officer who pinned him down by the neck with his knee for nearly nine minutes as Floyd pleaded, “I can’t breathe!”

“The evidence is consistent with mechanical asphyxia as the cause of death, and homicide as the manner of death,” Aleccia Wilson, a University of Michigan expert who examined his body at the family’s request, told a news conference.

The unrest has been the most widespread in the United States since 1968, when cities went up in flames over the slaying of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr, and rekindled memories of 1992 riots in Los Angeles after police were acquitted in the brutal beating of black motorist Rodney King.

On Friday night, as hundreds of protesters, raged by the death of George Floyd, gathered outside the White House, US President Donald Trump was briefly taken to an underground bunker.

The shocking videotaped death last Monday of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, at the hands of police in Minneapolis has ignited the nationwide wave of outrage over law enforcement’s repeated use of lethal force against unarmed African Americans.