US President Donald Trump, has responded to reports he fled to the White House safe bunker during protests over the death of George Floyd outside the White House over the weekend.
Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the White House to protest Floyd’s killing while under police custody, and parts of St John’s Church beside the White House caught fire due to the protests.
According to reports over 50 Secret Service agents were injured in clashes with protesters and Trump had to be rushed to the secret bunker for protection.
Trump has now said he went down to the White House bunker during the protests in Washington D.C. to inspect it and that he was not taken into secure shelter out of safety concerns.
Trump was reportedly furious at the image of himself in the underground secure bunker, which was designed for use in emergencies like a terrorist attack. He reportedly spent an hour there on Friday as hundreds of protesters gathered outside the White House throwing rocks and clashing with police.
‘I go down, I’ve gone down two or three times – all for inspection – and you go there, some day you may need it,’ Trump said Wednesday on Brian Kilmeade’s FOX News Radio show.
‘I went down. I looked at it. It was during the day, it was not a problem.’
‘It was more for an inspection.’
‘I was there for a tiny, short little period of time,’ he told Kilmeade in a 30 minute interview on Wednesday morning. ‘A whole group of people went with me as an inspecting factor.’
‘They said it would be a good time to go down and take a look because maybe sometime you’re going to need it,’ he noted. ‘I’ve been down – that’d be number two, so two and half sort of, because I’ve done different things, but two and a half.’
‘But I looked I was down for a very very short period of time, a very very short period of time, I can’t tell you who went with me but a whole group of people went with me,’ Trump added.
The Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) also known as the was first built during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the early 1940s. At the time, the United States was involved in World War Two, it has rarely been used except during the events of 9/11 when senior White House officials feared the hijacked planes might be heading for the White House.
