Anger and Flames: American cities roiled and burned over the weekend in continuing protest and violence over the police killing of 46-year-old George Floyd in Minneapolis a week ago.

  Police, and demonstrators and vandals clashed in the cities of Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and at least 75 cities overall. Dozens of cities declared an evening  curfew to diminish the nighttime crowds of angry people.

  Demonstrators confronting the police in several cities torched and vandalized cop cars while looting and burning stores.  This morning in Philadelphia, while looting continued, a pickup truck smashed into a bank in an attempted robbery.

The National Guard has been called out in Washington, DC after a night of looting and violence.

  In New York, two police SUVs charged into a barricaded crowd of demonstrators. Two lawyers were arrested for throwing Molotov cocktails at a police car, and mayor Bill de Blasio’s own daughter was among arrested demonstrators. In Chicago, six people were shot and one killed.

  In Minneapolis the driver of a tanker truck drove into a crowd and was arrested. California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency for Los Angeles County.

  All this came against the backdrop of a pandemic that has killed 104,383 Americans to date and put 40 million of them out of work under the watch of President Donald Trump.

  And as angry protesters surrounded the White House, Trump tweeted out insults to political leaders and the press, rumors, and threats. “Mayors must get MUCH tougher,” he wrote, “or the Federal Government will step in and do what has to be done, and that includes using the unlimited power of our Military and many arrests.”

  Echoing Richard Nixon in the days of racial and anti-war unrest, Trump called for “law and order.” He asked, “How come all of these places that defend so poorly are run by Liberal Democrats?”

  For an hour Friday, instead of addressing the nation, Trump was taken to the bunker under the White House for protection. Yet he tweeted bluster that protesters “have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen.”

  As the press covered the meltdown of America’s biggest cities, Trump tweeted, “Much more ‘disinformation’ coming out of CNN, MSDNC, @nytimes and @washingtonpost, by far, than coming out of any foreign country, even combined. Fake News is the Enemy of the People!”

  Rather than see the crisis as a surge of national frustration with police killings, Trump has laid blame on the movement known as ANTIFA, which stands for “Anti-Fascism.” ANTIFA is a movement, not an identifiable organization. Still, Trump tweeted, “The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization,” even though he doesn’t have the power to do that.

  Looking back on the week, New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker said on PBS’s”Washington Week, “We started this year thinking it was another 1998, because of impeachment. Then we moved to 1918 with the pandemic. Then we thought maybe it was another 1929, throw that on top of 1918, because of the Great Depression. Now we’re talking about 1968.”

While Rome Burns: In an enterprise that once had Americans fixed to their television screens, the private company SpaceX on Saturday launched astronauts into space from a US launch pad for the first time since 2011 when the space shuttle was retired from service. Against the backdrop of violence in the cities, the inspiration of the moment was lost.

  In a speech after the launch, President Trump used the occasion to insult previous presidents. “A new age of American ambition has now begun,” Trump said. “Past leaders put the United States at the mercy of foreign nations to send our astronauts into orbit. Not anymore. Today, we once again, proudly launch American astronauts on American rockets, the best in the world from right here on American soil.”

The Obit Page: Christo, the Bulgarian-born artist whose unlikely art was temporarily wrapping up large objects like the Pont Neuf in Paris and the Reichstag in Berlin, has died at age 84.

  Christo strung a giant curtain across Rifle Gap in the Colorado Rockies and arranged New York’s Central Park with thousands of zigzagging saffron-colored curtained gates. He put floating pink pads around islands in Florida’s Biscayne Bay and stuck yellow umbrellas along California’s 5 Freeway.

  Schooled in communist Bulgaria, one of his first jobs was to teach farmers along the route of the Orient Express to arrange haystacks and machinery in a way that created the illusion of activity and prosperity. — Herb Stempel, the nerdy know-it-all who blew the lid off television quiz show fixing in the 1950s, has died at age 93. Stempel later admitted that he had been coached on the questions and answers for “Twenty-One,” and how to dramatically stammer and bite his lip. “Remembering the questions was quite easy,” he told investigators, “but the actual stage directions were the most difficult thing, because everything had to be done exactly.”

The Bulletin Board: The wife of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis cop fired and arrested in the death of George Floyd, announced that she is divorcing her husband. — Hong Kong has banned the 20^th anniversary vigil for the Tien an Men massacre in Beijing, citing the threat of spreading the coronavirus. Don’t believe it. — Despite riots Saturday night, the lead headline on the front of the Sunday Morning Cleveland Plain Dealer said, “Ranking the Risk for Summer Fun Activities.”

Final Jeopardy: What is the nickname President Trump would slap on a president who hid in the White House basement bunker while protesters outside called for social justice?

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