People watch as a Cleveland police cruiser burns during a protest on Saturday seeking justice in the death of George Floyd. AP.

As several cities erupted in street protests after the killing of George Floyd, some of them resulting in clashes with police, Trump made no appeal for calm.

The turmoil came right to Trump's doorstep on Friday night as hundreds of people protesting Floyd's death and the President's response gathered outside the White House.

The image of the White House surrounded by police in riot gear fuelled the sense of a nation torn apart.

While governors and mayors have urged restraint, Trump seemed more intent on taunting the protesters, bragging about the violence that would have met them had they tried to get onto White House grounds.

"Big crowd, professionally organised, but nobody came close to breaching the fence," the President wrote on Twitter.

His suggestion that his own supporters should come to the White House on Saturday foreshadowed the possibility of a clash outside his own doors.

"Tonight, I understand, is MAGA NIGHT AT THE WHITE HOUSE???" he wrote on Twitter, using the acronym for his first campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again",.

Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington responded in kind on Saturday morning, saying her police department will protect anyone in Washington, including the President, but called him a source of division.

Trump led no national mourning as the death toll from the coronavirus passed 100,000 beyond lowering the flags at the White House, posting a single tweet and offering a passing comment on camera only when asked about it.

Donald Trump speaks to reporters on Saturday.

"Keep track of cities where hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage and serious injuries and death will take place," Rudy Giuliani, a former New York mayor who has served as Trump's personal lawyer, wrote on Twitter on Friday night.

"It should be no surprise that every one of these cities that the anarchist have taken over, are the same cities run by leftist Democrats with the highest violence, murder and poverty rates," he wrote on Twitter

Trump, who this past week retweeted a video of a supporter saying that "the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat" (though the supporter insisted he meant that in a political sense), picked up the theme on Friday night and again on Saturday morning

President Donald Trump vowed his administration would end what he called 'mob violence' in US cities following the death of an unarmed black man at the hands of Minnesota police

Violence flared in dozens of cities across America following the death in Minnesota of George Floyd after a white officer pressed a knee into his neck while taking him into custody

US President Donald Trump threatened to strip Hong Kong of some of its privileged trade status as a result of Beijing's crackdown