By ZEKE MILLER, JONATHAN LEMIRE and WILL WEISSERT

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is diving into the latest eruption in the nation’s reckoning over racial injustice with a trip Tuesday to Kenosha, Wisconsin, over the objections of local leaders.

The city has been riven by protests since the Aug. 23 shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man hit seven times in the back by police as he was getting into a car while they were trying to arrest him. On the eve of his visit, Trump defended a teenage supporter accused of fatally shooting two men at a demonstration in Kenosha last week and accused Democrat Joe Biden of siding with “anarchists” and “rioters” in the unrest.

“I’m there for law enforcement and for the National Guard because they’ve done a great job in Kenosha. They put out the flame immediately,” said Trump as he boarded Air Force One.

But Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers who deployed the National Guard to quell demonstrations in response to the Blake shooting, pleaded with Trump to stay away for fear of straining tensions further.

“I am concerned your presence will only hinder our healing,” Evers wrote in a letter to Trump. “I am concerned your presence will only delay our work to overcome division and move forward together.”

Biden has assailed Trump over the deadly protests that have sprung up on his watch. But Trump, claiming the mantle of the “law and order” Republican candidate, is offering himself as the leader best positioned to keep Americans safe.

He insisted his appearance in Kenosha could “increase enthusiasm” in Wisconsin, perhaps the most hotly contested battleground state in the presidential race, as the White House said he “wants to visit hurting Americans.” The White House said Trump was not going to meet with Blake’s family. Blake’s family planned a Tuesday “community celebration” to correspond with Trump’s visit.

“We don’t need more pain and division from a president set on advancing his campaign at the expense of our city,” Justin Blake, an uncle, said in a statement. “We need justice and relief for our vibrant community.”

The NAACP said Tuesday neither candidate should visit the Wisconsin city as tension simmers. Biden’s team has considered a visit to Kenosha and has indicated that a trip to Wisconsin was imminent but has not offered details.

Biden, in his most direct attacks yet, accused Trump earlier Monday of causing the divisions that have ignited the violence. He delivered an uncharacteristically blistering speech in Pittsburgh and distanced himself from radical forces involved in altercations.

Biden said of Trump: “He doesn’t want to shed light, he wants to generate heat, and he’s stoking violence in our cities. He can’t stop the violence because for years he’s fomented it.”

Trump, for his part, reiterated that he blames radical troublemakers stirred up and backed by Biden. But when he was asked about one of his own supporters who was charged with killing two men during the mayhem in Kenosha, Trump declined to denounce the killings and suggested that the 17-year-old suspect, Kyle Rittenhouse, was acting in self-defense.

After a confrontation in which he fatally shot one man, police say, Rittenhouse fell while being chased by people trying to disarm him. A second person was shot and killed.

“That was an interesting situation,” Trump said Monday during a news conference. “He was trying to get away from them, I guess, it looks like, and he fell. And then they very violently attacked him. … He was in very big trouble. He would have been — he probably would’ve been killed.”

After Trump’s defense of Rittenhouse, Biden laced into his response, saying in a statement: “Tonight, the president declined to rebuke violence. He wouldn’t even repudiate one of his supporters who is charged with murder because of his attacks on others. He is too weak, too scared of the hatred he has stirred to put an end to it.”

The president also suggested that some police officers “choke” when faced with challenging situations and offered an odd comparison, likening them to golfers who “miss a 3-foot putt.”

Trump and his campaign team have seized upon the unrest in Kenosha, as well as in Portland, Oregon, where a Trump supporter was shot and killed, leaning hard into a defense of law and order while suggesting that Biden is beholden to extremists. Trump, en route to Wisconsin, lamented the shooting in Oregon and again tried to link the violence to Democratic leadership.

Trump aides believe that tough-on-crime stance will help him with voters and that the more the national discourse is about anything other than the coronavirus, the better it is for the president. In the interview with Fox, Trump insisted that if he were not president, “you would have riots like you’ve never seen.”

Protests in Kenosha began the night of Blake’s shooting, Aug. 23 and were concentrated in the blocks around the county courthouse downtown. The first three nights, more than 30 fires were set and numerous businesses were vandalized. There was an estimated $2 million in damage to city property, and Kenosha’s mayor has said he is seeking $30 million from the state to help rebuild.

The violence reached its peak the night of Aug. 25, two days after Blake was shot, when police said a 17-year-old armed with an illegal semi-automatic rifle shot and killed two protesters in the streets. Since then marches organized both by backers of police and Blake’s family have all been peaceful with no vandalism or destruction to public property.

In Pittsburgh, Biden resoundingly condemned violent protesters and called for their prosecution — addressing a key Trump critique. And the former vice president also tried to refocus the race on what has been its defining theme — Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has left more than 180,000 Americans dead — after a multi-day onslaught by the president’s team to make the campaign about the violence rattling American cities.

Biden’s wife, Jill, on Tuesday kicked off a multi-week, 10-city tour of schools disrupted by the pandemic in eight battleground states, drawing a direct line from the empty classrooms to the administration’s failures combating COVID-19.

During her tour of a Wilmington, Delaware, school, she spoke with teachers and administrators about doubts that in-person learning will actually resume anytime soon and the challenges — including obtaining new small desks and protective equipment to make sure classrooms can handle social distancing — if they do. She said feelings about heading back to school “have turned from excitement into anxiety, and the playgrounds are still.”

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Lemire reported from New York. Weissert reported from Wilmington. Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, and Alexandra Jaffe in Washington contributed reporting.

By GILLIAN FLACCUS

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — State Police will return to Portland to help local authorities after the fatal shooting of a man following clashes between President Donald Trump supporters and counter-protesters that led to an argument between the president and the mayor over who was to blame for the violence.

Protesters were back on the streets for a demonstration Sunday night outside a public safety building. Police declared an unlawful assembly and arrested 29 people. Two of those arrested had handguns and others had knives and at least one had an expandable baton, police said.

Many in the group wore helmets, gas masks, goggles, and external armor. Police said some carried shields and reflective squares used to reflect police lights back toward officers. Some threw rocks, eggs, and other items at officers and police vehicles.

After Trump called Ted Wheeler, a Democrat, a “fool” and faulted him for allowing mayhem to proliferate in the liberal city, the visibly angry mayor lashed out during a Sunday news conference, addressing the president in the first person.

“That’s classic Trump. Mr. President, how can you think that a comment like that, if you’re watching this, is in any way helpful? It’s an aggressive stance, it is not collaborative. I certainly reached out, I believe in a collaborative manner, by saying earlier that you need to do your part and I need to do my part and then we both need to be held accountable,” Wheeler said.

“Let’s work together…Why don’t we try that for a change?”

Trump on Monday tweeted: “Portland is a mess, and it has been for many years. If this joke of a mayor doesn’t clean it up, we will go in and do it for them!” He did not describe any specifics on how that would happen.

The testy news conference followed a chaotic 24 hours that began Saturday evening when a caravan of about 600 vehicles packed with Trump supporters drove through the liberal city and was met with counterprotesters. Skirmishes broke out minutes later a supporter of the right-wing group Patriot Prayer was fatally shot.

Patriot Prayer founder Joey Gibson identified the victim as Aaron “Jay” Danielson. He called the victim a “good friend,” but provided no further details. Danielson apparently also went by the name Jay Bishop, according to Patriot Prayer’s Facebook page.

“We love Jay and he had such a huge heart. God bless him and the life he lived,” Gibson said in a Facebook post. Trump retweeted the victim’s name and wrote, “Rest in peace Jay!”

It wasn’t clear if the shooting was related to the clashes, which have become a flashpoint in the national Black Lives Matter protests since George Floyd was killed in May and an increasing centerpiece in Trump’s law-and-order re-election campaign theme.

Police have released little information about the fatal shooting and Chief Chuck Lovell said Sunday that investigators are still gathering evidence. Earlier, the agency released a plea for any information related to the killing, including videos, photos or eyewitness accounts.

Late Sunday, Gov. Kate Brown released details of a plan to address the violence while protecting free speech. She said the district attorney’s office will prosecute serious criminal offenses and the sheriff’s office will work with other agencies to hold people arrested for violent behavior and ensure there is adequate jail space.

Also, Brown said State Police will return to Portland to help local police, and nearby law enforcement agencies will also be asked to assist.

“We all must come together—elected officials, community leaders, all of us—to stop the cycle of violence,” the Democrat said in a statement.

Trump and other speakers at last week’s Republican National Convention evoked a violent, dystopian future if Democrat Joe Biden wins in November and pointed to Portland as a cautionary tale.

Patriot Prayer is based in Washington state and was founded in 2016. Since early 2017, its supporters have been periodically coming to Portland to hold rallies for Trump, ratcheting up tensions long before the national outrage over Floyd’s death.

Portland has seen nearly 100 consecutive nights of Black Lives Matter protests and many have ended with vandalism to federal and city property, including the federal courthouse and City Hall. In July, Trump sent more than 100 federal agents from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to safeguard federal property — a move that instead reinvigorated the protests.

Thousands of people clashed with the federal agents each night for two weeks.

Those agents withdrew July 31 but smaller nightly protests have continued in pockets of the city. More than 600 people have been arrested since late May.

On Sunday, Portland authorities urged people to stay away from the downtown.

Trump earlier Sunday appeared to be encouraging his supporters to move into Portland in the wake of the shooting. After the shooting, the president shared a video of his supporters driving into Portland and called those in Saturday’s caravan “GREAT PATRIOTS!”

Wheeler begged those who wanted to come to Portland to “seek retribution” to stay away.

“If you’re from out of town and you’re reading something on social media — if you’re reading any facts on social media — they’re probably wrong because we don’t have all the facts yet,” Wheeler said. “This is not the time to get hotheaded because you read something on Twitter that some guy made up in his mother’s basement.”