Tag: Trump wants to be a dictator

Trump’s use of religion follows playbook of authoritarian-leaning leaders the world over

It was a striking moment: Donald Trump, Bible in hand, posing for photos in an apparent moment of political theater made possible by the dispersal of protesters through the use of tear gas.

The president’s visit to St. John’s Episcopal Church, known as “the Church of the Presidents,” came immediately after giving a Rose Garden speech framing himself as “your president of law and order” and threatening to send federal troops to “restore security and safety in America.” The next day, Trump made another high-profile visit to a place of worship, this time Washington’s St. John Paul II National Shrine.

Coming at a time of social turbulence, critics accused Trump of following authoritarian-leaning world leaders by sidling up to religion to reinforce an image as a strongman defending a particular brand of tradition. Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington Mariann Budde said as much, commenting that Trump used the Bible at St. John’s “as if it were a prop or an extension of his military and authoritarian position.” Continue reading.

The Story Behind Bill Barr’s Unmarked Federal Agents

The motley assortment of police currently occupying Washington, D.C., is a window into the vast, complicated, obscure world of federal law enforcement.

Few sights from the nation’s protests in recent days have seemed more dystopian than the appearance of rows of heavily-armed riot police around Washington in drab military-style uniforms with no insignia, identifying emblems or name badges. Many of the apparently federal agents have refused to identify which agency they work for. “Tell us who you are, identify yourselves!” protesters demanded, as they stared down the helmeted, sunglass-wearing mostly white men outside the White House. Eagle-eyed protesters have identified some of them as belonging to Bureau of Prisons’ riot police units from Texas, but others remain a mystery.

The images of such military-style men in America’s capital are disconcerting, in part, because absent identifying signs of actual authority the rows of federal officers appear all-but indistinguishable from the open-carrying, white militia members cosplaying as survivalists who have gathered in other recent protests against pandemic stay-at-home orders. Some protesters have compared the anonymous armed officers to Russia’s “Little Green Men,” the soldiers-dressed-up-as-civilians who invaded and occupied eastern Ukraine. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to President Donald Trump Thursday demanding that federal officers identify themselves and their agency.

To understand the police forces ringing Trump and the White House it helps to understand the dense and not-entirely-sensical thicket of agencies that make up the nation’s civilian federal law enforcement. With little public attention, notice and amid historically lax oversight, those ranks have surged since 9/11—growing by roughly 2,500 officers annually every year since 2000. To put it another way: Every year since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the federal government has added to its policing ranks a force larger than the entire Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Continue reading.

Mattis’s Trump broadside underscores military tensions

The Hill logoFormer Defense Secretary James Mattis’s stunning public criticism of President Trump is underscoring growing fears in the military that the president is compromising the integrity of the U.S. Armed Forces by treating to use them against protesters.

Trump has urged governors to deploy National Guard troops to “dominate the streets” and stop violent demonstrations, saying he would dispatch U.S. military forces to states and cities that do not meet his demands.

On Monday, streets near the White House were forcibly cleared of peaceful protesters by federal law enforcement officers. That night, a National Guard Lakota helicopter flew low over protesters in the city in a show of force previously unthinkable in a U.S. city. Continue reading.

Ex-Defense Secretary William Perry joins Mattis in condemning Trump

The military “was never intended to be used for partisan political purposes,” he wrote.

Former Defense Secretary William Perry on Thursday accused President Donald Trump of politicizing the armed forces and criticized his threats to deploy the military against American citizens.

Perry, a national security expert who served in government for decades, including as Defense secretary from 1994 to 1997 under President Bill Clinton, said in a statement provided to POLITICO that the military “was never intended to be used for partisan political purposes.”  Continue reading.

Civil rights groups sue Trump over assault on peaceful protesters near White House

Protesters were forcefully removed from a park near the White House before Trump walked to a nearby church to take a photo

The American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups are suing Donald Trump, William Barr and other federal officials over the assault on peaceful protesters near the White House on Monday, to allow the president to hold a photo op at a historic church.

According to a release from the ACLU of the District of Columbia, the lawsuit filed on behalf of Black Lives Matter DC and individual protesters accuses Trump and the other officials are accused of “violating their constitutional rights and engaging in an unlawful conspiracy to violate those rights”.

The Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the law firm of Arnold & Porter also filed the suit. Continue reading.

Trump and allies try to rewrite history on handling of police brutality protests

Washington Post logoPresident Trump claimed on Wednesday that he had not hunkered down in a secure bunker as hundreds of protesters gathered around the White House last Friday night. He said Secret Service had not raced him to the secret underground location. And he described his trip to the subterranean space as a “tiny little short” visit that was really “much more for an inspection.”

But the president’s alternate history, which he unspooled to Brian Kilmeade on Fox News Radio Wednesday, was a false one — one facet of his days-long attempt to rewrite the history surrounding the police brutality protests that have engulfed the fortified White House in recent days.

Trump and his family were rushed to a secure bunker after at least four protesters breached the temporary fences set up near the Treasury Department grounds Friday around 7 p.m., according to arrest records and people familiar with the incident. Continue reading.

I Cannot Remain Silent

Our fellow citizens are not the enemy, and must never become so.

It sickened me yesterday to see security personnel—including members of the National Guard—forcibly and violently clear a path through Lafayette Square to accommodate the president’s visit outside St. John’s Church. I have to date been reticent to speak out on issues surrounding President Trump’s leadership, but we are at an inflection point, and the events of the past few weeks have made it impossible to remain silent.

Whatever Trump’s goal in conducting his visit, he laid bare his disdain for the rights of peaceful protest in this country, gave succor to the leaders of other countries who take comfort in our domestic strife, and risked further politicizing the men and women of our armed forces.

There was little good in the stunt. Continue reading.

Barr seeks to subdue D.C. protests by ‘flooding the zone’ with federal firepower

Washington Post logoFrom an FBI command center in Washington’s Chinatown neighborhood, Attorney General William P. Barr has orchestrated a stunning show of force on the streets of the nation’s capital — a battalion of federal agents, troops and police designed to restore order, but one that critics say carries grim parallels to heavy-handed foreign regimes.

Barr was tapped by President Trump to direct the national response to protests and riots over police misconduct since the police-custody death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The attorney general has focused much of his attention on the District, where unrest and arrests swelled over the weekend before a jarring clash Monday to clear peaceful protesters from outside the White House — an order Barr issued personally. By Tuesday night, as he sat in the FBI command center until nearly midnight, the city’s mood seemed to have calmed. Continue reading.

A dangerous new factor in an uneasy moment: Unidentified law enforcement officers

Washington Post logoAfter more than a week of unrest, tension in a number of major U.S. cities has eased. The vandalism and looting that had often used large, peaceful protests as cover have faded; the eruption of violence at protests appears to be less common. The Associated Press reports that active-duty members of the military who were moved into Washington to help keep order would be moved back out, though that decision was later reversed.

But it wasn’t only components of the Defense Department that had been brought to the nation’s capital to help with the “domination” that President Trump sought to display in the wake of the turmoil. Washington residents have also been confronted with a number of other heavily armed law enforcement officers who share an unexpected characteristic: Neither their affiliation nor their personal identities are discernible.

On Tuesday, Mother Jones reporter Dan Friedman encountered these individuals, who gave no more specific identification than that they were associated with the Justice Department. Continue reading.

The dystopian Lincoln Memorial photo raises a grim question: Will they protect us, or will they shoot us?

Washington Post logoWho in the Pentagon, or the leadership of the National Guard of the District of Columbia, thought this was a good look? Who thought what America needs now is a viral image of the American military in camouflage and body armor occupying a memorial that symbolizes the hope of reconciliation, that has drawn to its steps Marian Anderson to sing for a mixed-race crowd during a time of segregation and Martin Luther King to proclaim “I have a dream,” and millions of nameless souls, of all races, who believe there is some meaning in words like “the better angels of our nature”?

On June 2, members of the D.C. National Guard stand on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during ongoing protests against police brutality and the death of George Floyd. (Win Mcnamee/Getty Images)

A photograph of members of the District’s National Guard on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial began racing around Twitter and other social media Tuesday, as the country was still digesting a violent assault by Secret Service, police and guard troops on peaceful protesters outside the White House on Monday. The photo showed troops standing resolutely, perhaps provocatively, on the memorial’s wide and inviting steps, as if they owned it. To many, it symbolized the militarization of Washington, of our government and country, and the terrifying dissolution of old boundaries between partisan politics and the independent, professional military.

A spokesman for the D.C. National Guard, Senior Master Sgt. Craig Clapper, said the troops seen there were called in to protect the memorial after some minor damage over the weekend, and in response to potential new threats. The D.C. National Guard serves under the authority of the secretary of the Army, and the order to protect the memorial is ongoing. But despite earlier closure of the memorial and the appearance that it is being occupied by soldiers, said Clapper, the public still has access, and the soldiers were not carrying riot shields.