#Trump says suspect in ambush shooting of LA sheriff’s deputies ‘must be hit hard’

President Trump called the suspect in the ambush shooting of two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies “animals” as he continued a three-day swing through western states to push his law-and-order platform.

“Animals that must be hit hard!,” the president posted on Twitter early Sunday morning after a campaign speech in Nevada.

The two deputies were reportedly clinging to life after being shot at point-blank range through the window of their patrol car on Saturday in Compton by a lone gunman.

The suspect in the shooting of the two officers – one a 31-year-old mother and the other a 24-year-old man – was still at large.

Law enforcement authorities said the two were “both still fighting for their lives.”

Protesters gathered outside the hospital and blocked the entrance and exit of the emergency room and chanted “we hope they die,” the sheriff’s department said in a tweet.

The posting said the department warned the protesters not to block the entrances and exits, saying “people’s lives are at stake when ambulances can’t get through.”

The president has hammered a message of law-and-order on the campaign trail as protests continue nationwide since the death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers in May of George Floyd.

Many of the protesters and members of the Black Lives Matter movement have called for racial justice and the defunding of police departments.

But some of the protests have become violent, and the president has called on the governors and mayors to quell that unrest and urged them to reach out to him for federal help.

In his campaign stop Saturday, Trump told his supporters that if Joe Biden is elected president in November, the “rioters, the anarchists win.”