American civil society has turned on Donald Trump just as South Africans turned on Jacob Zuma.

The incident happened because Trump was angry his brief sequestration for safety to a bunker underneath the White House during the demonstrations made him look weak.

Trump took Barr, Secretary of Defence Mark Esper and a combat uniformed chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, with him.

They included Republican Trump voters who said the video of George Floyd being killed by a police officer required a show of solidarity.

General John Kelly, who served first as Trump's Homeland Security secretary and then as White House chief of staff, urged Americans to think more carefully about who they elect president, at both his character and his ethics.