Trump praises law enforcement response in Minneapolis, says confronting bigotry will ‘go very easily’ at event in Dallas

Washington Post logoPresident Trump praised the use of tear gas and other force to disperse Minneapolis protesters, calling it a “beautiful scene” and describing the National Guard’s actions “like a knife cutting butter.”

“I’ll never forget. You saw the scene on that road … they were lined up. Man, they just walked straight. And yes, there was some tear gas and probably some other things,” Trump said in opening remarks at a roundtable on policing and race. “And the crowd dispersed and they went through. By the end of that evening, and it was a short evening, everything was fine.”

Trump’s event at a conservative, evangelical and predominantly white church in Dallas on Thursday afternoon came as the White House has yet to announce what new measures it might support in response to the protests against racial injustice that have gripped the nation since the killing of George Floyd by a police officer. Continue reading.

Former Harvard psychiatrist Lance Dodes on Trump’s ‘paranoid rage’: The president wants to ‘turn America into a police state’

AlterNet logoThe protests sparked by the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day continue. This people’s uprising against police brutality and social injustice have spread far beyond Minnesota Minneapolis to all 50 states and around the world.

Donald Trump is a destroyer, not a healer. Given his tendencies toward authoritarianism, even fascism, Trump is only capable of sowing more division in a nation convulsing in pain and anger over the murder of George Floyd, the resulting explosion of police violence and what that reveals about our extreme levels of social inequality and broader culture of cruelty.

Enraged by the protesters in Washington, Donald Trump has now retreated into the White House, literally surrounding it with National Guard troops law enforcement agents (some with no badges or insignias), and an improvised wall of fences and barriers. Continue reading.