Donald Trump's personal lapdog Attorney General William Barr took time off from his fiction-finding efforts to manufacture evidence to exonerate his boss Tuesday and spoke to a group of police officers and prosecutors, taking the opportunity to threaten certain "communities" that if they didn't start giving "support and respect" to cops, "they might find themselves without the police protection they need."
Jeb Fain, spokesperson for American Bridge, the super PAC that recorded and released the comments, told HuffPost that Barr wasn't "being subtle and that shouldn't surprise us considering this administration's record. […] When it comes to communities of color, he sees justice and equal protection under the law as subject to conditions." Those conditions are shutting up and submitting. "Barr's words are as revealing as they are disturbing," Fain continued, "flagrantly dismissive of the rights of Americans of color, disrespectful to countless law enforcement officers who work hard to serve their communities, and full of a continuing disregard for the rule of law."
It's not new from Barr, though it is an escalation to direct threats. Back in August, he told the Fraternal Order of Police that there should be "zero tolerance for resisting police," and attacked prosecutors who stand against police abuses. "There is another development that is demoralizing to law enforcement and dangerous to public safety," he told the police group. "That is the emergence in some of our large cities of district attorneys that style themselves as 'social justice' reformers, who spend their time undercutting the police, letting criminals off the hook and refusing to enforce the law."
There's that bullhorn of a dog whistle from Barr. The man the U.S. Senate confirmed to be the people's chief law enforcement officer is threatening some of those same people. While he didn't specify which people, his meaning was pretty damned clear. It's the people of color who have finally had enough with racist policing and the increasing death toll in their communities at the hands of law enforcement.