Effective crisis management begins with rational, clear-headed leadership. Neither culture wars nor actual wars can be managed by tweet. Social media posts cannot halt upheaval in Minneapolis or ease pandemic suffering. A president who thinks tweets are a proper response to the rioting in Minneapolis is a president who has lost any claim to sane leadership. For the sake of our nation, can the adults in the room please take Trump's Twitter toy away from him?

George Floyd died on Memorial Day while handcuffed as white officer Derek Chauvin brutalized him. Three of Chauvin's colleagues assisted in this killing, either by helping restrain Floyd or by standing there, doing nothing, while Chauvin choked off his life. It was graphically displayed on video for the world to see, and the public outrage and violence that followed was entirely predictable.

Public officials in Minnesota and elsewhere are labeling the killing a murder. Did Trump somehow think he could help calm this highly volatile situation by tweeting out insults and political jabs while suggesting that the protesters be shot? Perhaps most galling was his assertion that the local and state government response represented a "total lack of leadership." A man who commands military movements by tweet, shrugs off 100,000 pandemic deaths, throws paper towels to hurricane survivors and golfs amid economic catastrophe is in no position to judge others' leadership.

Twitter correctly posted a warning that Trump's advocacy of violence in Minneapolis was a violation of the company's rules — rules that Trump had already violated dozens of times before. As if to underscore Trump's short attention span, the unfolding violence in Minneapolis dominated his posts for only a few minutes on Thursday and Friday. Around the same time as the rioting started, his thoughts bounced between China, the pandemic, aid for a hospital in Utah, absentee voting, Russia, California Rep. Adam Schiff, and Trump's absurd assertion that Twitter is infringing on his right to lie.

Meanwhile, Minneapolis burned.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz correctly stated that "we cannot have the looting and recklessness that went on (because) society cannot function" under such conditions. But society also cannot continue to function when police officers repeatedly violate the civil rights of minorities and repeatedly kill unarmed black detainees while escaping swift justice.

The wanton destruction in Minneapolis solves nothing, but it is naive to think it will end while authorities across the country fail to address the ongoing racial taint infecting the nation's police forces. St. Louisans know this subject all too well.

Appeals to protesters to refrain from violence will get nowhere if calm, rational dialogue yields only more injustice and death inflicted by those charged with enforcing the law. And if Trump truly wants to quell the violence, he must start by observing an extended moment of silence on Twitter.

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