Executive Order on Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Violence

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1.  Purpose.  The first duty of government is to ensure domestic tranquility and defend the life, property, and rights of its citizens.  Over the last 5 weeks, there has been a sustained assault on the life and property of civilians, law enforcement officers, government property, and revered American monuments such as the Lincoln Memorial.  Many of the rioters, arsonists, and left-wing extremists who have carried out and supported these acts have explicitly identified themselves with ideologies — such as Marxism — that call for the destruction of the United States system of government.

Anarchists and left-wing extremists have sought to advance a fringe ideology that paints the United States of America as fundamentally unjust and have sought to impose that ideology on Americans through violence and mob intimidation.  They have led riots in the streets, burned police vehicles, killed and assaulted government officers as well as business owners defending their property, and even seized an area within one city where law and order gave way to anarchy.  During the unrest, innocent citizens also have been harmed and killed.

These criminal acts are frequently planned and supported by agitators who have traveled across State lines to promote their own violent agenda.  These radicals shamelessly attack the legitimacy of our institutions and the very rule of law itself.

Key targets in the violent extremists’ campaign against our country are public monuments, memorials, and statues.  Their selection of targets reveals a deep ignorance of our history, and is indicative of a desire to indiscriminately destroy anything that honors our past and to erase from the public mind any suggestion that our past may be worth honoring, cherishing, remembering, or understanding…

full rant (with the force of federal law) HERE  

Berlin, 1933 anyone?

If the Fire Devil can provoke enough violent mayhem in godless American cities, he can have Bill Barr write up a fiery legal-sounding declaration of martial law.   History, folks, written in the blood of those without the immediate power not to be bled.

The American Catastrophe Through German Eyes.

William Barr, a professional who confidently misleads, will be testifying tomorrow in Congress.  I was thinking about this diehard monarchist the other day, and read up a bit on his criminal investigation into the origins of the Mueller Investigation and Obama’s illegal “spying” on the Trump campaign.  The “oringes” as our president said.  Very suspicious oringes, by a man who was not even constitutionally eligible to be president!

Heather Cox Richardson sent a great Letter to Americans last night, reminding everyone that she wrote her first nightly letter following the story of the July 25, 2019 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky when Trump asked for a favor in return for already approved US military aid to Ukraine.  The famous “perfect call,” the complete non-quid pro quo the Democrats tried to impeach the president over in the first public federal trial in US history without witnesses or evidence presented [1].   

The timeline the historian provides, with Barr urging the acting Director of National Security to disregard the law by covering up the “credible”, “urgent” whistleblower complaint about the call, reminded me of another heavy criminal count against Bill Barr that should be part of his impeachment.

Barr, who auditioned for Trump by writing an unsolicited memo explaining how he’d do much better than Jeff “Recuse me,” Sessions in protecting the president, how he’d make the Mueller Report go away, no matter how damaging the findings might be.  He was then as good as his word.  Only Barr’s smooth, brazen lying account of the findings of the investigation kept a lid on the damning report (Mueller showed sweeping and systematic Russian interference in the 2016 election on behalf of Trump, with many contacts with the Trump campaign, and led to successful prosecutions of Trump operatives who lied to the FBI, Mueller and Congress about them, and established a triable case that Trump was guilty of a long pattern of criminal obstruction of justice, something he and Barr continue to practice every day).   

A little less than a year ago, when the new acting Director of National Intelligence got the report on Trump’s phone shakedown of Zelensky, a complaint determined to be “credible” and “urgent,” instead of forwarding it to Congress, as required by law, he ran it by Trump’s new Attorney General Bill Barr.   Under the law, the DNI had to forward a credible, urgent whistleblower complaint to Congress within a certain short time frame.  Barr told him to forget about it.  The complaint that led to Trump’s impeachment only came out because the Inspector General (Michael Atkinson, recently fired by Trump) informed Schiff and other, eh… “sick, dangerous traitors” of the whistleblower’s complaint that was being illegally withheld from Congress at Barr’s advice to keep the complaint to himself, no need to send it to Congress.  

Recently Barr lied about ordering unmarked federal troops (from the Bureau of Prisons, Border Control, Homeland Security etc.) to unlawfully clear Lafayette Park for Trump’s bible photo op— there’s video of him talking to the commanders right before the violent assault on peaceful protesters.  Barr stated recently that Roger Stone had been “righteously” prosecuted and convicted of those seven felony counts and that the DOJ was never influenced by political considerations of any kind (even though Barr, seemingly in response to Trump tweets, infamously reduced the sentencing recommendations right before Stone was sentenced).  A day or two after making his comments about the “righteous prosecution” of self-proclaimed dirty trickster Roger Stone, when Trump commuted Stone’s sentence, Barr acknowledged that Stone was perhaps a victim of an illegally started partisan scheme to topple the president.   

Same deal with General Michael Flynn — in spite of his two guilty pleas, Barr decided that the man was an innocent victim of Trump’s enemies — someone who fell into a treacherous “perjury trap” set by vicious Deep State haters of America!  He twisted the meaning of “material” to mean that the lies Flynn had admitted to telling were, essentially  harmless white lies he’d been tricked into telling, certainly not a criminal matter.  The real criminals, according to Trump and Barr — many of whom are now under a searching criminal investigation by Barr’s most zealous prosecutor, are unAmerican traitors like Robert Mueller III, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Stzrok, Lisa Page, John Brennan, James Clapper etc.   

One of Barr’s first appointments after taking office as Attorney General was a federal prosecutor to investigate the “oringes” of the politically motivated witch hunt investigations into candidate Trump and his connections to Vladimir Putin.  Barr assigned longtime federal prosecutor John Durham, an aggressive criminal investigator, with full subpoena powers, to come up with evidence to support criminal charges for those sick, dangerous bastards and their ilk who had illegally spied on Trump’s campaign.  Some criminal indictments would be a delicious October Surprise.  Durham and Barr have been working on this criminal investigation, internationally, for almost a year and a half [2].

Last winter Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who investigated the same thing, released a report of his office’s investigation into the legal predicates for an investigation into the Trump campaign’s now known to be extensive ties to the Russian efforts to get Trump elected.   His report concluded that the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was adequately authorized and predicated under existing Justice Department and FBI policy.  Not without its problems, and partly due to problems with those policies, but adequately predicated in reasonable suspicions of wrongdoing.

Barr and Durham immediately, publicly, shot back:

Barr: “The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.” About thirty minutes later, Durham offered his own statement that “[l]ast month, we advised the inspector general that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.” Durham added that, unlike the inspector general, his team had access to “developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S.”

In April 2020 Barr spoke with FOX opinion host Laura Ingraham and said:

My own view is that the evidence [gathered by Durham] shows that we’re not dealing with just mistakes or sloppiness. There is something far more troubling here, and we’re going to get to the bottom of it. And if people broke the law, and we can establish that with the evidence, they will be prosecuted.”

and

I think what happened to [Trump] was one of the greatest travesties in American history. Without any basis they started this investigation of his campaign, and even more concerning, actually is what happened after the campaign, a whole pattern of events while he was president. So I—to sabotage the presidency, and I think that— or at least have the effect of sabotaging the presidency.

OK, you will say (if only to shut me up), Barr’s a fat, ruthless, unprincipled Nazi fuck — but he is also, literally, an authoritarian enabler and the biggest reason Trump is still in office.   He has spent his life fighting a culture war, to the death, to destroy once and for all those who do not hate Communists as much as all Americans should hate those godless bastards.   He believes Christ tells him what to do, like Torquemada did as the head of the Spanish Inquisition when they interrogated non-believers by tying them to a stake and setting them on fire. 

“My lawyers, the Jesuits, Protectors of the Faith, say the auto de fe is exactly what Jesus most dearly loves, the screaming of heretics dying in agony purifies us all in our devotion to the Prince of Peace and his vision of God’s infinite mercy…”   

Barr, by the way, like Scalia and Kavanaugh, is in the intellectual line of those defenders of the faith, the Jesuits, geniuses at using their interpretation of God’s law (and man’s) to fully justify the worst things imaginable as Christ’s will.  

Without Barr, Trump’s new Roy Cohn, Trump would already be gone.   Barr has been a criminal AG, as corrupt an AG as Trump is a corrupt president.   Speaker Pelosi, who squashed a Criminal Obstruction of Judgment count (well-supported by Mueller’s findings and in evidence continually since Mueller’s report came out) in Trump’s impeachment, won’t let talk of Barr’s impeachment be a distraction to Biden being elected, to maintaining the current power structure of the Democratic Party, whatever the unwashed protesting masses may think about it. 

Maybe all the polls are right this time and Biden will win.  We have to hope he does, if Barr doesn’t pull out all the federal stops to block voting in major cities, round up “agitators”, bring in violent riot squads, mobilize ICE and the US Marshals and goons from the Bureau of Prisons to close voting sites.   These same squads of unmarked riot police will defend Trump in his White House bunker (POTUS’ll only be inspecting it– not hiding in it!) in the event Trump loses the rigged election, the election Barr and Trump both insist will be stolen by millions of fake mail-in ballots. 

In the event the election goes against Mr. Trump, Barr will be there next to him in the bunker, barking orders until the last protester is safely out of commission or in a privatized detention/death camp — or until POTUS puts a gun in his mouth.  Bet your last Confederate dollar on it, boys and girls.

[1]  Historian Heather Cox Richardson:

A year ago today, Trump had a phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and promised to deliver the money Congress had appropriated for Ukraine’s protection against Russian military incursions. Then he added: “I would like you to do us a favor, though….”

While Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who was on the call, told his superiors what he had heard, someone else filed a whistleblower complaint. That complaint went to Trump’s own appointee at the Intelligence Community’s Inspector General’s office, Michael Atkinson. Atkinson agreed that the matter was both “credible” and “urgent” and that House and Senate Intelligence Committees must be informed, as required by law.

Atkinson followed the law, passing the information to the acting Director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire, on August 26. Maguire had only taken office ten days before, on August 16, after Trump’s first DNI, Dan Coats, and Coates’s second-in-command, Sue Gordon, both resigned. As an acting director, rather than a Senate-confirmed leader, Maguire served at the pleasure of the president.

Maguire was supposed to scour the whistleblower complaint of all classified information before forwarding to Congress by September 2, as the law required. But, instead, Maguire took the complaint to the Department of Justice, headed by Trump loyalist Attorney General William Barr. On his advice, Maguire decided not to turn over the information to Congress.

When that happened, Atkinson told the relevant congresspeople that the DNI was illegally withholding the complaint. On September 10, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff (D-CA) demanded that acting DNI Maguire produce it. Maguire refused, saying that the complaint was about someone not in the Intelligence Community, and therefore not covered by the whistleblower law. (The law does not give him the authority to refuse to deliver a complaint his IG considers credible and urgent. It says he MUST deliver it.)

On Friday, September 13, Schiff wrote a scathing letter to Maguire that brought this whole issue to public attention, noting that it sure seemed like Maguire might be protecting the president, and demanding Maguire follow the law and hand over the whistleblower complaint.

I happened to be scrolling through Twitter when Schiff’s letter dropped, and I recognized it for what it was: a powerful member of Congress accusing a specific member of the Executive Branch of breaking a specific law… the sort of moment on which American history turns.

And that, my friends, is how these Letters began.

Since then, the House impeached Trump but the Senate exonerated him; Vindman is gone; Atkinson is gone; Maguire is gone. But as Trump has increasingly consolidated his power, Americans have woken up and taken to heart that democracy is not a spectator sport.

It has been a year by the calendar, but an eternity in the history of this nation.

Still, for all that I yearn for a time when we can go for days without worrying about what’s going on in the White House, I am profoundly grateful to have discovered so many other people who care as deeply as I do about this country.

There is plenty of news today, but none of it breaking, so I am going to let it go for a night.

See you all tomorrow.

[2] From Lawfare (at the link above and HERE)

The fruits of the Durham investigation will reportedly be disclosed later this summer, or in the fall. This post does a deep dive into what has been publicly reported about the Durham investigation, and then offers analysis. We include Barr’s commentary on the investigation, but not the president’s. The bottom line is that (1) the probe as it developed is not one that should have been conducted by a federal prosecutor conducting a criminal investigation, and (2) Barr’s tendentious running commentary on the investigation violates Justice Department rules, politicized the investigation and damaged the credibility of whatever Durham uncovers. (The post is long. If you want to skip the lengthy factual recitation and jump to the analysis, click here.)

from that analysis section:

No contemporary attorney general has, like Barr in the Durham investigation, offered such extended, opinionated, factually unsupported and damning public commentary, naming names and drawing conclusions, about an ongoing investigation that is at least in part a criminal investigation.

Our president, the son of a corrupt sociopath, is a corrupt sociopath. I say that in a nonjudgmental way, based solely on his compulsive lying, uncontrollable bragging, greed, constant anger, vengefulness and absolute lack of empathy.

Congress passed a more than two trillion dollar ($2,400,000,000,000.00) “stimulus” bill in late March, providing $1,200 for every American householder with an income of less than $75,000, expanded unemployment benefits for the more than 20,000,000 Americans who lost their jobs during the pandemic and many, many hundreds of billions for businesses and industries hurt by the coronavirus.

Oversight and transparency were going to be big problems in an administration that hates both of those things, with a Senate that rubber stamps whatever the president demands and a president who makes his will known by tweet.

The president, believing himself to be the smartest and most ethical (and unfairly persecuted) man in the world, chafes at the idea of anyone investigating anything to do with him and his cronies. He condemns all such attempts at oversight as illegal, politically motivated witch hunts. His current Attorney General backs him up: the president is being unfairly targeted by unscrupulous enemies, constantly, with unprecedented ferocity, possibly with criminal motives, motives that are currently under DOJ criminal investigation.

On April 1, 2020, Bill Moyers interviewed Neil Barofsky, the special investigator general appointed by George W. Bush in 2008 to track the $750,000,000,000 in TARP bailout money as it was being spent. You will recall that the financial industry, the guys who engineered the massive falsely triple A-rated toxic asset-based fraud that smashed the world economy for a few years, were “made whole” by the bailouts — getting their huge personal bonuses, the industry emerging from the crisis of their making more profitable and more powerful than before. None of that was special inspector general Barofsky’s fault — he fought every corrupt maneuver as it was happening, possibly thwarted a few.

Moyers and Barofsky spoke of the need for strict oversight and complete transparency for distribution of this vast stimulus/bailout package. Much of the oversight, it appeared, was to be done by Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin. As for transparency, the money was to be distributed by Mnuchin, to those most worthy to get it, with no public accountability as it was handed out. Moyers:

They wanted the Secretary of the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, to be free to choose who gets the money and who doesn’t. And to keep his choices from the public for six months. McConnell then tried to weaken a strong oversight proposal. Finally, as we saw, both sides compromised, and the bill was passed with, you know, amazing bipartisan support.

Yet, when the president signed the bill last week, the only people he had in the Oval Office with him were Republican members of Congress and the Secretary of the Treasury. Now, what do you take from that? As a moment of bipartisan triumph, the first time in years this happened in Washington, the only people who get invited to celebrate with the president in the Oval Office are Republicans?

The compromise included this provision:

Bill Moyers: I’m sure you noticed that Congress actually borrowed ideas and even language concerning the inspector general’s office from the first bailout bill, to include it in the bailout bill we’re talking about.

The language about the new inspector general is supposed to monitor how the Treasury Department extends loans and loan guarantees to businesses. And the new legislation requires the new inspector general to notify Congress immediately if the White House doesn’t cooperate fully with an audit or investigation.

At one point, Moyers described Mnuchin’s many untruthful responses and non-responses during his Senate confirmation:

But at the same time, Neil, the new law gives the Treasury Department broad discretion over how to disperse these billions upon billions of dollars. And the fellow running Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, has been implicated in so many scandals, I wouldn’t want him in the same room with my kid’s piggy bank.

During his confirmation he failed to disclose to the Senate Finance Committee nearly $100 million in assets. He didn’t tell them about his role as a director of an investment fund in the Cayman Islands, where very rich people send their money to be laundered. He lied to Congress about foreclosure misconduct activity by a bank he managed. He reportedly misled Congress about a deal the Treasury Department struck with a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin.

This is the man President Trump wants to hand out billions of dollars to corporations and to Wall Street, a guy up to his neck in various conflicts of interest, self-dealing, and ethics lapses. All you have to do is read David Dayen’s book Chain of Title— to see how he chronicles the way Mnuchin got fabulously rich while hundreds of thousands lost their homes. What does that do to your optimism about the potential success of this bailout?

And they spoke about the crying need for real, professional, dispassionate, nonpartisan oversight, beyond the president’s promise that he would provide the oversight, make sure everything was done fair and square. What could go wrong with a greedy, corrupt, compulsively lying, secretive, justice obstructing, increasingly desperate, litigious man hiding his own taxes, financial records, school transcripts and everything else being in charge of oversight and transparency?

As Moyers and Barofsky spoke about the need for oversight, and their relief that a special inspector general had been agreed to in a bipartisan compromise, I kept thinking: didn’t Trump fire a bunch of inspectors general? Google was quick with the answer.

During a pandemic, Mr. Trump took the opportunity to rid himself of five pesky, disloyal inspectors general. Inspectors general:

are appointed by the president and are supposed to be confirmed by the Senate, although many current IGs are in an acting capacity and have not been confirmed by the Senate.^[13] The president may dismiss an inspector general, but is supposed to give Congress 30 days’ notice and an explanation of the reason for removing them.^[14] The 30 days’ notice requirement was added to the 1978 law in 2008; its purpose was to re-emphasize the role of the IG as an independent watchdog and to dissuade presidents from retaliatory firings.^[12]

The first to get the ax, on Friday night, April 7, was Michael Atkinson, the Intelligence Community IG, the man who determined the whistleblower complaint about Trump’s perfect July 2019 call to Zelensky, (the famous NOT quid pro quo for which Trump was totally exonerated by McConnell, Lindsey Graham and Alan Dershowitz) was credible and urgent. Atkinson got the Alexander Vindman treatment.

Also fired on Friday, April 7 was Glenn Fine, Defense Department IG, the man selected to head the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC) team of IGs tasked with overseeing the spending of $2.4 trillion in CARE Act funds. His crime, apparently, was being selected head IG for overseeing distribution of the $2.4 trillion covid relief package.

When Trump signed the coronavirus funding bill, he had issued a signing statement challenging the required oversight committee, and said that he personally would take the oversight role and would be in control of what information was sent to Congress about the use of the $2 trillion in relief funds authorized by the bill.

The next three IG firings and demotions followed within a few weeks, while the country struggled to conduct its uncoordinated, failed covid-19 response.

IG of the Transportation Department (run by McConnell’s wife, heir to a Chinese shipping fortune), Mitch Behm, who among other duties (all quotes are from this piece from lying CBS):

is listed as a member of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), which is tasked with overseeing implementation of the $2.4 trillion coronavirus relief packages passed by Congress in response to the coronavirus pandemic and composed of 20 inspectors general.

Christi Grimm, acting IG of Health and Human Services, was replaced after she:

released a report detailing testing and supply shortages in hospitals responding to the coronavirus pandemic. Grimm found “severe” shortages of testing supplies, “widespread shortages of PPE,” difficulties in maintaining adequate staffing levels and in expanding hospital capacity.

The president called the report “just wrong” in a briefing with reporters and demanded to know when Grimm was appointed to the position. On Twitter, Mr. Trump questioned whether she scrutinized the H1N1 pandemic that occurred during the Obama administration and accused her of falling to speak with top military officials and Vice President Mike Pence about the response to the coronavirus.

Steve Linick, IG of the State Department, who had the temerity (stupidity, really… from a short-term career standpoint) to open a corruption investigation into Trump’s current loyal Secretary of State, pious Christian anti-communist Mike Pompeo. Linick had apparently been begging for it, daring Trump to fire him:

The White House said Trump had dismissed Linick at the request of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Linick had been investigating whether Pompeo had used government employees to run personal errands for him.^[7] In a separate, almost completed investigation, Linick was reportedly looking into whether Pompeo had evaded Congressional limitations on arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates by declaring an emergency, even though none existed.^[31] A third line of inquiry into Pompeo was his regular hosting of several dozen lavish, taxpayer-funded “Madison Dinners” at the State Department for hundreds of attendees, including many influential business and media figures; there were concerns that Pompeo had been using the dinners to further his own political career (assembling the names and contact information of possible future contributors and fundraisers), rather than for official diplomatic purposes, potentially violating the Hatch Act.^[32][33][34]

So disloyal, SAD!

Eliot Engel, a New York congressman who chairs the House Foreign Affairs panel, said in a statement Linick’s office was investigating Pompeo and said his “firing amid such a probe strongly suggests that this is an unlawful act of retaliation.”

Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa who led the call for a more thorough reasoning from Mr. Trump for his removal of Atkinson, again reiterated the president’s responsibility to provide justification to Congress when firing an inspector general.

“A general lack of confidence simply is not sufficient detail to satisfy Congress,” Grassley said Saturday.

“No reason to get excited,” the thief he kindly spoke.

“Nothing to see here, you vicious, dangerous, sick, disloyal pricks,” muttered the innocent president to nobody in particular, as he made preparations to deploy more riot-geared federal goon squads to violently protect anything within ten square blocks of American historical statues in America’s most openly disloyal cities.

A very stable genius, you’d better believe it.

What’s America coming to when you can’t even listen to a decent American Congressman argue on youTube that the racist “Democrat” [1]  party should be outlawed in peace these days…?

these ads are out of control… why do we have to get past these when we’re trying to digest a straightforward patriotic expression from a member of Congress!

Mr. Gohmert (R-Texas) introduced a resolution in Congress that would ban the Democratic Party.   Because they are the party of the Ku Klux Klan and slavery, argues Gohmert.  Beyond that:

“Their strategy is if we can keep America in turmoil, the riots, the economic problems that Covid has caused, then it’s better for getting rid of Donald Trump.  And it’s sad, but it appears they don’t care so much about letting America heal because they want the political advantages they think come from seeing America devastated, just so they can get back in power.   That is horrendous, the Republicans have never felt that way and still do not.”

[1]  Representative Gohmert does slip up and refer to the hated Democrat Party as the Democratic Party a few times.

Granted, violently stirred emotions are stronger motivators than soundly reasoned thoughts, granted there are some very powerful people feeling dangerously desperate right now — but, take a moment to look this over.   We are at a historical moment of peril, for many reasons, including the escalating insanity of folks to whom too much is never enough.

A friend recommended Boston College American history professor Heather Cox Richardson’s daily news digest, which I’ve been getting nightly (arrives in NY around 3 a.m.) for the last few weeks.   Generally very well-done, thoughtful summaries of some of the day’s most important stories.  This one, even if you don’t read all the details, is worth reading for the full context of this bit at the end:

It is not just officials who are objecting to the administration’s authoritarian demonstrations. There was a new force on the Portland streets this weekend: moms. Dressed in yellow shirts, wearing helmets and masks, several hundred women are forming chains between the officers and the protesters. They call themselves the Wall of Moms, and are chanting: “I don’t see no riot here; take off your riot gear,” and “Feds stay clear, moms are here!” Officers tear gassed them last night, but they came back tonight in bigger numbers.

Tonight’s protest was one of the largest this month.

Literally put tears in my eyes and a waver in my voice, trying to read that paragraph aloud to Sekhnet.  Moms organized to protect peaceful protesters now protesting secret — likely illegal — federal police violence — tear gassed.    

The Times, I see, had a headline today: Vet Had a Question for the Feds in Portland.  They Beat Him in Response.   Used a little tear gas on him, and broke his fingers with their clubs, as anyone would.  
The H-word!   Oy, the H-word!!!! [1]

———- Forwarded message ———
From: Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American <heathercoxrichardson@substack.com>
Date: Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 3:04 AM

July 19, 2020

Trump is shifting his reelection pitch, and it has frightening implications for the country.

Over the weekend, the federal crackdown in Portland, Oregon continued, with people in unmarked camouflage uniforms arresting peaceful protesters and taking them away in unmarked vehicles. And then, they appeared—for now—to let them go. The administration appears to be constructing a scene of violence and disorder for the news media to show to viewers.

It seems clear that the Trump campaign—which got a new director last Wednesday– is going to make its case for reelection on the idea that there is violence in America’s cities that must be addressed with federal force, and that only Trump is willing to do so.

This is an apparent attempt to overshadow the increasingly alarming news about the coronavirus, which is now burning across the country with renewed vigor. Even as Republican governors are backtracking and asking people to wear masks, Trump continues to insist—falsely– that our spiking numbers are because of increased testing and that the virus will eventually disappear.

In an interview tonight with Chris Wallace on the Fox News Channel (remember, Wallace is an actual reporter, not an entertainment personality like Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity), Trump claimed—again, falsely—that some of the states are rolling back their reopening not because of the ravages of new coronavirus infections, but because they are trying to hurt his chances of reelection. “Many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day. They have the sniffles and we put it down as a test. Many of them — don’t forget, I guess it’s like 99.7 percent, people are going to get better and in many cases they’re going to get better very quickly,” he said.

When Wallace asked him how he would “regard your years as President of the United States,” Trump said: “I think I was very unfairly treated. From before I even won I was under investigation by a bunch of thieves, crooks. It was an illegal investigation.” Wallace tried to steer him back on track: “But what about the good—” Trump interrupted: “Russia, Russia, Russia.”

Wallace: “But what about the good parts, sir?

Trump: No, no, I want to do this. I have done more than any president in history in the first three and a half years, and I’ve done it through suffering through investigations where people have been—General Flynn, where people have been so unfairly treated….”

He went on, rehashing his grievances, until Wallace finally bade him goodbye.

From this wreckage, the campaign is trying to find a new, winning issue in law and order.

The footage from Portland shows what looks like a war zone, but the Department of Homeland Security’s own list of the actions of the “violent anarchists” in the city consists of graffiti, torn down fences, and fireworks, all situations the local police insist they can handle. The mayor, both senators, and the governor of Oregon have all asked for the federal troops to be removed, but the administration refuses. Yesterday, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said the protests were winding down before the federal troops came in and escalated the situation.

In an interview today on the Fox News Channel, Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said that Trump is working with Attorney General William Barr and Acting Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf to roll out a new plan to “go in” to make sure communities– like Chicago and Milwaukee—across the country are safe. People are assuming that means more federal troops in those– and other– cities, but Meadows did not, in fact, say that explicitly.

The Trump campaign immediately retweeted Meadows’s interview. Trump himself tweeted: “We are trying to help Portland, not hurt it. Their leadership has, for months, lost control of the anarchists and agitators. They are missing in action. We must protect Federal property, AND OUR PEOPLE. These were not merely protesters, these are the real deal!” The argument appears to be that we should not pay attention to the administration’s failure to protect us from coronavirus because it promises now to protect us from “violent anarchists.”

On Friday, The US. Attorney for the District of Oregon, Billy Williams, recognized that the administration’s tactics in Portland had gone too far. He stated: “Based on news accounts circulating that allege federal law enforcement detained two protesters without probable cause, I have requested the Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General to open a separate investigation directed specifically at the actions of DHS personnel.”

Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum didn’t wait for an investigation. On Friday, she sued the Department of Homeland Security and the Marshals Service in federal court to try to get a court order to stop federal agents from arresting people in Portland. The complaint blames the federal agents for “the current escalation of fear and violence in downtown Portland.”

On Sunday, the chairs of the House Judiciary Committee, the House Homeland Security Committee, and the House Oversight Committee, wrote a letter to the inspectors general of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice asking them to investigate “the Trump Administration’s use of federal law enforcement to violate the rights of our constituents.” They tied the events in Portland to the larger story of the attack on protesters at Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., and to the deployment of cold water cannons, pepper spray, and tear gas on those protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline across the Standing Rock Reservation.

But, they noted, they had an even broader concern. “The legal basis for this use of force has never been explained—and, frankly, it is not at all clear that the Attorney General and the Acting Secretary are authorized to deploy federal law enforcement officers in this manner. The Attorney General of the United States does not have unfettered authority to direct thousands of federal law enforcement personnel to arrest and detain American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights. The Acting Secretary appears to be relying on an ill-conceived executive order meant to protect historic statues and monuments as justification for arresting American citizens in the dead of night. The Administration’s insistence on deploying these forces over the objections of state and local authorities suggest that these tactics have little to do with public safety, but more to do with political gamesmanship.”

The letter went on: “This is a matter of utmost urgency. Citizens are concerned that the Administration has deployed a secret police force, not to investigate crimes but to intimidate individuals it views as political adversaries, and that the use of these tactics will proliferate throughout the country. Therefore, we ask that you commence your review of these issues immediately.”

It is not just officials who are objecting to the administration’s authoritarian demonstrations. There was a new force on the Portland streets this weekend: moms. Dressed in yellow shirts, wearing helmets and masks, several hundred women are forming chains between the officers and the protesters. They call themselves the Wall of Moms, and are chanting: “I don’t see no riot here; take off your riot gear,” and “Feds stay clear, moms are here!” Officers tear gassed them last night, but they came back tonight in bigger numbers.

Tonight’s protest was one of the largest this month.

—-

Notes:

https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/2020-07-19_letter_to_doj_dhs_ig_regarding_special_deputations_portland.pdf

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/portland-mayor-feds-escalated-the-situation

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/07/oregon-sues-government-detaining-protesters-unmarked.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/19/us/politics/republicans-contradict-trump-coronavirus.html

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/moms-form-human-shield-front-152544392.html

protests:

Robert Evans (The Only Robert Evans) @IwriteOK

I am here outside the Federal Courthouse in Downtown Portland, where a crowd of mothers have gathered again after being tear gassed last night by feds. This is one of the largest Portland crowds we have seen this month.

July 20th 2020

9,894 Retweets25,840 Likes

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/opinion/portland-protests-federal-agents.html

I’m not linking to the FNC transcript because FNC always messes up the newsletter, but you can google: “Transcript: Fox New Sunday Interview with President Trump”

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[1]   How the squeamish in Germany probably referred to Mr. Hitler, circa 1936.

From an article, by her, about AG Barr on Bill Moyers’s website: