A "senior" Defense Department official has been eagerly telling multiple reporters that Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley were "unaware" that peacefully demonstrating Americans were being attacked by police and military forces to clear a path for a Trump photo-op that both of them took part in only minutes later. It is an obvious, brazen lie from both Esper and Milley.
We know it is a lie. They know it is a lie. The whole nation watched, on television, and can confirm that they are lying. Both were fully complicit in Trump's act.
According to reporter Nick Schifrin, Esper and Milley's "understanding was they were walking out of the White House to walk through Lafayette Park to review efforts to quell the protests."
The further claim: "They were not aware that the park police and law enforcement had made a decision to clear the square. ... Once they walked out, they continued with him."
Reporter Paul Shinkman, speaking with the same or a different "senior" anonymous defense official, reports both were summoned to the White House while en route to the FBI to "work with the director and AG." (But the attorney general, however, was himself heading to the White House at the same time.) As their White House meeting with Trump concluded, "the president indicated an interest in viewing the troops that were outside. And the secretary and chairman went with him to do so."
This is so obvious and brazen a lie from the Defense Department that it defies words. Esper and Milley were with Trump, in the White House. At the precise time Trump's Rose Garden speech was intended to start (presumably, a horrific White House tactic to ensure live television coverage), flash-bang grenades were detonated directly next to the White House, rattling reporters waiting in the Rose Garden. Smoke rose from the area.
We are expected to believe that neither of the two military men noticed or were alarmed by explosions going off, repeatedly, immediately next to the White House. That they had no awareness that an action was taking place directly adjacent to the building. That they thought nothing of it.
After fifteen minutes of explosions, smoke, and advancing riot-gear clad police and soldiers, Trump stepped out for a brief teleprompter-based speech that concluded with the announcement that he would be walking to the church that had just been cleared of worshippers, through the park that had just been cleared with flash-bang grenades.
And both Esper and Milley accompanied him as he walked through that park, smoke still in the air, and did not make the connection that the numerous explosions rattling the area and the military force surrounding the area were unconnected with Trump's announced walk.
Bullshit. There is lying, and then there is lying, and this is absolute nonsensical bullshit from Esper and Milley. It is lying propaganda.
It is the claims of two sniveling cowards who took part in an illegal act against American citizens.
There is no plausible way that Esper and Milley both did not know, with absolute certainly, that the White House had just used force to clear the path Trump walked. It is impossible. And yet they walked beside him.
For participating, they are traitors to their oaths and their nation. For lying about it, they are propagandists and cowards.