Donald Trump's call to bring in the military to end the violence stemming from protests around the US shows there is a "vacuum of leadership" in the country, 9News political editor Chris Uhlmann says.
Mr Trump spoke from the Rose Garden of the White House today and threatened to "solve" the rioting with military force.
Uhlmann said Mr Trump had two choices to make with his address.
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"He could be the consoler-in-chief, which is what we see sometimes from the American president who reaches out to his nation and tries to heal division, and he could exacerbate them and do what he did then, behave like a totalitarian leader who wants to put the militia on the streets," Uhlmann told Today.
"What he was talking about was bringing the army on to the streets of America. We've seen that with the rollout of the National Guard.
"That's something we have, unfortunately, seen before on the streets of America.
"Race riots are by no means unusual in the United States. Go back to Detroit in the 1960s, 1968 after Martin Luther King was killed.
"Fascinatingly, at that time, the American president was Lyndon Johnson, he was asked and said, 'I don't know why we would be surprised. If you put your foot on a man's neck for 300 years and let him up, what do you think he is going to do? He is going to knock your block off.'
"That's what we are seeing today."
'That's his game plan'
Uhlmann said Mr Trump's decision to evoke law and order was a calculated one.
"The president has decided he doesn't want to unite the United States of America, he wants to pitch to a particular part of it, hopes he gets enough of it in order to win the next election and keep it divided," Uhlmann said.
"That's his game plan.
"Unfortunately, too, that has ramifications for us because the leader of the United States has been seen, since the end of the Second World War, as the leader of the free world.
"All of the institutions that were set in place institutions that were set in place - the United Nations, the World Bank, the World Health Organisation, the World Trade Organisation, which were all about talking out your problems in the world - are being trashed one by one by the leader of the country that put them in place.
"That's an enormous tragedy but it's more than that.
"That is an enormous danger to Australia at a time when we're seeing the rise of another power which has a very different idea about the way the world should run, and that's China, and the President of China is no better than the President of the United States, he just gets better press because he doesn't allow bad press."
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Trump's walk to nearby church 'affronting'
Uhlmann said Mr Trump's remarks would exacerbate partisan division rather than unite the country.
"You'll listen to Donald Trump if you already believe the sorts of thing Donald Trump was saying," he said.
"If you hated Donald Trump, then you will be enraged by the sorts of things he was saying today and America today will be more divided than it was yesterday because of its leader."
After his speech, Mr Trump left the White House to walk to the historic St John's Church in Washington, D.C.
The famous church was vandalised during riots in the nation's capital overnight.
Secret Service and police pushed back protesters with shields, rubber bullets and tear gas to clear a path for Mr Trump.
"The thing I found affronting about that walk across the extraordinarily heavily guarded part of Lafayette Park, any correspondent knows it well, he walks across and you can see the crowds have been pushed way back so there is no danger to the President of the United States," Uhlmann said.
"Where is he going? To the St John's Church.
"The most famous devotee of that church, it was Abraham Lincoln who prayed to the end of the Civil War.
"What was the Civil War caused by? By the fact one half of the nation kept a people enslaved for 250 years and all of what we're seeing today is the rage that pours out from the kind of humiliation that goes from generation to generation, that's kept people under the thumb of others forever and unfortunately it breaks out routinely.
"I don't think we've seen violence as widespread of this since Martin Luther King riots in 1968, you can understand the rage of the population when the one gentle man who was trying to lead that country to a better future was assassinated."
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