June 1, 2020: Seeds of Dictatorship Seen in Lafayette Square

 

June 1, 2020: This may go down in history as the day Donald Trump destroyed his presidency.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (1/10/21): It didn’t. But the most authoritarian president in history finished himself off on January 6, 2021.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE #2 (7/16/21): Okay, I was too optimistic in January 2021, too. Trump supporters shrugged off the Capitol Hill riot. And leaders of the Republican Party generally continued to kiss his posterior.

 

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Trump’s “Selma March,” in reverse.

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Black Lives Protests already convulse the nation. Hundreds of thousands are marching in the streets. There is looting, too, an unfortunate corollary of legitimate grievance throughout history. On Friday, May 29, protesters rattle barriers around the White House. A breach seems imminent. Secret Service agents move Trump, the First Lady, and son Barron, to a secure room beneath the Presidential Mansion. Some idiot tries to set fire to St. John’s Episcopal Church, within view of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Protesters in Lafayette Square, directly across from the White House, throw bricks and rocks at police. Chants of, “Fuck Trump,” fill the air. 

Donald Trump is rattled. 

The story leaks in the press about the First Family retreating to the bunker. The president fumes. It makes him sound weak. After stewing all weekend, on this Monday in June, he decides to act. 

Irresponsibly, of course.

 

* 

There has to be “retribution.” 

MONDAY AFTERNOON he takes a call with governors and mayors around the country. The New York Times acquires audio. At a time when a calming voice is needed, President Trump is agitated. What he wants to do is target and silence protesters. “You can’t do the deal where they get one week in jail,” he tells the others. “These are terrorists. These are terrorists…it shouldn’t be hard to take care of, and we’re going to take care of it.” His words are either promise or threat. 

“Terrorists.” 

Make note of what he calls American protesters.

 

Trump tells everyone on the other end of the line that Gen. Mark A. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is listening on the White House end. Milley is “a fighter, a warrior, had a lot of victories, and no losses. And he hates to see the way it’s being handled, and the various things, and I just put him in charge.” This comes as a surprise to everyone, including Gen. Milley. 

In times of unrest, governors have power to call out the National Guard. If they need help they ask for federal assistance. 

None of the governors have. 

“We’re strongly looking for arrests, we do have to get much tougher,” Trump insists. “You have to dominate, if you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time. They’re going to run over you, and you’ll look like a bunch of jerks. You have to dominate. You have to arrest people and try people, and they have to go to jail for long periods of time [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted]” If the President of the United States has ever heard of “due process,” it doesn’t show.

 

Trump seems to be watching TV during the call. He expresses shock at what happened in Dallas. He says protesters kicked a man to death. He admits he’s not sure the man is dead. His contempt is clear. “It’s coming from the radical left. You know it. Everybody knows it,” he barks. He sees film of a young black looter who carries a new TV out of a ruined store and puts it in the back of a car. “The harder you are, the tougher you are, the less likely it is you’re going to be hit,” the president explains. 

He blames the trouble on Antifa. He says it’s “like a movement. If you don’t put it down, it will get worse and worse. This is like Occupy Wall Street. It was a disaster, until one day somebody said, ‘That’s enough,’ and they just went in and wiped them out.” Trump’s anger has taken hold. He wants Americans wiped out. He says the Occupy folks weren’t worried about the law. They were camped out, “ordering pizzas.” Finally, police cleared out the protesters. It was “bedlam for an hour. And after that it was beautiful,” he says. “But these are the same people. They’re anarchists.”  

He ignores the fact protests have spread to hundreds of cities, towns, and neighborhoods across the nation.

 

He tells the mayors and governors, “I’m for everybody, I’m representing everybody. I’m not representing radical right, radical left, I’m representing everybody.” You can’t be weak, he says again, “but most of you are weak.” 

Mr. Trump makes clear his admiration for tactics being deployed by the National Guard, offering a play-by-play commentary. He’s excited to see protesters on TV, being knocked down “like bowling pins.” He sees a rioter throw a brick, winding up like a baseball player. Apparently, he watches a slow motion replay. These people have to get “five years, ten years” in jail, he growls. There has to be “retribution.” He promises, in D.C. “we’re going to do something that people haven’t seen before.” 

He’s hatching a plan.

 

* 

NOT LONG AFTER, the President marches out to the Rose Garden and addresses the nation. At this point, protesters in Lafayette Square are peaceful. The crowd is not friendly to the president, but these are citizens exercising First Amendment rights. Trump? Trump wants to sound tough. He promises to be the “law and order” president. More ominously, he threatens to use active duty troops to clear the nation’s streets, if governors and mayors “refuse” to do their jobs. 

He says he will do it quickly, and might invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807. Trump is later rumored to have asked about bringing in 10,000 U.S. soldiers to drive away the protesters from in front of the White House. 

Meanwhile a plan is being perfected – if you can say Team Trump ever perfects a plan. Someone (reportedly Ivanka) convinces the president to take a stroll. The president, or someone in his administration, orders law enforcement officers from an alphabet soup of federal agencies, bolstered by active duty military police, to drive the protesters from Lafayette Park. Shortly after 6:30 p.m., authorities begin firing tear gas, and using flash-bang devices and bludgeons to clear the area.

 

Once the air clears, Trump and an entourage of top aides emerge from the White House. Ivanka is there, sporting a protective black COVID-19 mask, and carrying a $1,500 designer handbag. Inside is a Bible. White House aide and son-in-law Jared Kushner is by her side. The usual assortment of bootlickers, including Press Secretary McEnany, flank the president. Unfortunately, Gen. Milley accompanies the “marchers.” So does Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. Both appear to give a military stamp of approval to the attack on peaceful protesters. 

Trump bravely walks a thousand feet – out the front door of the White House – across Pennsylvania Avenue – cutting through Lafayette Park – and crossing another boulevard – to stand in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church. There, he takes the Bible handed to him by First Daughter Ivanka. He hoists it over his head, glowers, and intones, “Greatest country in the world. And we’re going to keep it safe.” 

Trump poses in front of St.  Johns.

Having offered a dozen words of “inspiration,” he pivots on his heels (ignoring the pain he feels from his old bone spurs) and hoofs it back, another thousand feet, to his West Wing bunker. Then the president gets back to the business of dividing the country. Soon after completing his pathetic “Selma March” in reverse, he tweets out fresh insult. He calls the African American mayor of Washington D.C. “incompetent.” She is not fit, he says, to lead a great city.

 

* 

LIKE MOST AMERICANS, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is aghast. The fact that Esper and Milley accompanied Trump, strikes her and many others as having watched the seeds of dictatorship being planted. “I imposed a curfew at 7 pm.,” Bowser explains. “A full 25 minutes before the curfew & w/o provocation, federal police used munitions on peaceful protestors in front of the White House.” 

This, she warns, will only antagonize demonstrators. It will make the job of D.C. police “more difficult.” “Shameful!” she calls the decision. “DC residents – Go home. Be safe,” she suggests. 

MAGA fans, of course, applaud the president’s stunt. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: Press Secretary McEnany announces that Trump’s appearance before St. Johns was a great moment for the American people. She compares Trump to Winston Churchill bucking up the spirits of Britons during the London Blitz in 1940. 

As Maureen Dowd writes, this is too much for most Americans to swallow. “We shall fight them on the golf courses,” she writes, quoting a friend. “We shall fight them on Twitter. We shall fight them at Mar-a-Lago.” 

In days to follow, more than two dozen former U.S. military leaders pillory the man in the White House. They make their concern clear. They label Trump a threat to the U.S. Constitution. 

(Due to their importance, their comments are collected under a separate post.)