Trump defends Tweet threatening 'shooting', says 'looting leads to shooting'

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters after he received a 2020 hurricane season briefing during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Washington, U.S. May 28, 2020. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump in a Twitter post on Friday repeated that "looting leads to shooting" after an earlier Tweet in which he threatened on Friday to stop looters in Minneapolis with deadly military force was hidden by a warning from Twitter.

Trump defended the earlier Twitter post, saying it was "spoken as a fact, not as a statement."