“I’m a mom,†Ms. Faulkner said. “And you know, when — and you’ve talked about it, but we haven’t seen you come out and be that consoler in this instance. And the tweets, ‘when the looting starts, the shooting starts.’ Why those words?
The president replied that it was “an expression I’ve heard over the years.â€
In the interview, he again expressed remorse for Mr. Floyd, and said that officers like Mr. Chauvin, who has been charged in Mr. Floyd’s death, do damage to others on police forces.
At another point, the president said that he had done more for black people than any of his predecessors, before mentioning Abraham Lincoln.
“Let’s take a pass on Abraham Lincoln because he did good. Although it’s always questionable, you know, in other words, the end result,†Mr. Trump said, trailing off.
“Well, we are free, Mr. President,†Ms. Faulkner responded. “He did pretty well.â€
The president then ticked off a list of policy changes, like criminal justice reform efforts, funding for historically black colleges and universities, and opportunity zones. He described those decisions in starkly transactional terms.
“The people I did it for — they go on television and thank everybody but me,†Mr. Trump said.
At another point, the president told Ms. Faulkner that his campaign did not intentionally choose June 19 as the date of his first rally since March, when they were stopped because of the threat of the coronavirus. The date is a holiday known as Juneteenth, honoring the day in 1865, after the Civil War had ended, when a Union general read orders in Galveston, Texas, that slaves in the state had been freed.
And the rally is being held in Tulsa, Okla., the site of a bloody massacre of black people in 1921.
“The fact that I’m having a rally on that day, you can really think about that very positively as a celebration,†Mr. Trump said.
