Brandishing a Bible in a church across from the White House on Monday after he threatened to send in the military if the protests rocking cities across the United States were not quelled, President Donald Trump declared the US the "greatest country in the world" and that he was going to keep it that way.
The unrest and Mr Trump's reaction to it are undermining the US' global reputation, already bruised by the country's high Covid-19 death toll and the Trump administration's inadequate reaction to the outbreak.
In Washington on Tuesday, a cavalcade of armoured vehicles rolled through a major artery of the city which hundreds of protesters afterwards marched down, stopping to kneel to protest against police brutality, which disproportionately affects black Americans.
The US' long-simmering racial concerns ignited into protests after the death of Mr George Floyd on May 25. The 46-year-old black man was killed in custody when a white policeman in Minnesota knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Images of the incident shocked Americans and galvanised protests in all 50 states, as well as in dozens of cities worldwide.
Political watchers noted that it is Washington that typically expresses concern when such turmoil erupts in other nations' capitals, and when foreign leaders call on the military to step in to contain citizens' protests.
Dartmouth College political scientist Brendan Nyhan wrote on Twitter: "An embattled incumbent representing a declining ethnic majority who lost the popular vote calls out the military to quell protests, attacks the legitimacy of elections, seeks to limit access to the franchise.
"You'd know exactly what this was if you saw it in another country."
Asked to react on Monday to Mr Trump calling for military action against protesters, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paused for 20 seconds before saying: "We all watched in horror and consternation what's going on in the United States."
Australia, one of the US' staunchest allies, said it was investigating the hitting of an Australian television news crew by police live on air, as they covered the protests outside the White House on Monday.
The US Press Freedom Tracker has so far collated nearly 200 similar incidents of violence against journalists covering the George Floyd protests and their property.
"What the world sees is the end of American exceptionalism.
Foreign policy analysts say that Washington's failings will embolden countries regularly scolded by the US for their human rights records, including China.
"Corruption, government mismanagement, injustice, police brutality, uprisings and riots, military crackdown, people versus government," said Johns Hopkins University foreign policy scholar Vali Nasr, the previous dean of its School of Advanced International Studies. "Trump has made America look like so several other tinpot dictatorships."
Foreign policy analysts say that Washington's failings will embolden countries regularly scolded by the US for their human rights records, including China.
Said Mr Richard Fontaine, chief executive of the Centre for a New American Security think-tank: "Chinese leaders are likely to exploit the protests, and Trump's response, to buttress their propaganda campaign that the US is hypocritical on values and that its domestic democratic practices are flawed because they lead to unrest."
On Tuesday, two days before the anniversary of the 1989 Tiamen Square protests in Beijing, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met protest survivors and on Twitter voiced his condemnation of the Hong Kong police's ban this year of a yearly vigil honouring victims of the crackdown.
However, his tweet was swiftly met with derision from critics.
Responding on Twitter, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut wrote: "Standing up for Tiamen Square vigils at the very moment his boss is calling for an American Tiamen Square. Irony is dead."