‘Make Whites Great Again’ and ‘All Lives Matter’ trended on Twitter in the furor following George Floyd’s death

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People gathered at Chicago Ave. and East 38th Street during a rally in Minneapolis on Tuesday, May 26, 2020.Carlos Gonzalez/Star Tribune via Getty Images

A video of a handcuffed black man struggling to breathe while pinned under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer and eventually dying left the United States reeling on Tuesday.

The next morning, two very different phrases were trending on Twitter: “Make Whites Great Again” and “All Lives Matter.”

The former, a play on President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again,” had amassed more than 55,000 tweets by Wednesday afternoon.

But there appeared to be some confusion behind it.

A photograph making the rounds online shows a man wearing a red “Make Whites Great Again” cap. Misinformation circulated on social media initially identifying him as Derek Chauvin, the white former police officer seen kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for eight minutes as he gasped: “Please, I can’t breathe.”

However, the image actually depicts a man named Jonathan Riches, the Hill reported.

Twitter users were outraged and called on the social media platform to use the fact check tag that was attached on Tuesday to Trump’s tweets about mail-in voting.

Meanwhile, some claimed that it doesn’t matter that Chauvin was misidentified as wearing the hat. They accused the policeman of racism anyway, saying the incident with Floyd is all the evidence they need.

Others were left agape by the trend.

“All Lives Matter” sparked fury of its own, with people complaining that the phrase is meant to direct attention away from the issues at play in Floyd’s death. It had been included in over 78,000 tweets as of Wednesday morning, according to The Hill.

Meanwhile, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has called on Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman to pursue criminal charges against Chauvin, the arresting officer, KMSP-TV reported. He and three other officers were removed from the police force over the incident

“I’ve wrestled, more than anything else over the last 36 hours, with one fundamental question: Why is the man who killed George Floyd not in jail?” Frey said on Wednesday. “If you had done it or I had done it, we would be behind bars right now. I cannot come up with a good answer to that question.”

Floyd’s death prompted protests in Minneapolis on Tuesday night. Thousands of peaceful masked demonstrators carried signs that said, “I can’t breathe” and “Stop killing black people,” and chanted “It could’ve been me.” A crowd of unruly protestors also gathered outside a police station and threw bottles and rocks at officers in riot gear, who responded by firing tear gas, rubber pellets, and flash grenades into the crowd.

“It is on us as leaders to see this for what it is and call it what it is. George Floyd deserves justice,” Frey said.

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Shawanda Hill (R), the girlfriend of George Floyd, reacts near the spot where he died while in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 26, 2020.Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images

Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd, echoed the sentiment. He told CNN that the police treated his brother “worse than they treat animals.”

“Knowing my brother is to love my brother,” he said. “They could have Tased him; they could have maced him. Instead, they put their knee in his neck and just sat on him and then carried on.”

Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney involved in the cases of Ahmaud Arbery and Trayvon Martin, is representing Floyd’s family and pushing for murder charges to be filed against the police officers involved.

“The plan is to make sure these officers are charged with the murder of George Floyd,” Crump told The New York Times. “When you really think about it, it was nine minutes that he begged for his life while this officer had his knee in his throat, had his knee in his neck.”