USA Today reports that Donald Trump's furiously loyal attorney general, William Barr, "has deployed" riot police from the federal Bureau of Prisons to tamp down the protests against police violence across the nation.
Trump's team is sending prison guards to break up Black American protests. They’re sending prison guards.
The details of Barr’s deployment are still unclear. USA Today reports that a "federal prison riot team arrived Sunday in Miami," but also that Miami Assistant Police Chief Manny Morales said he "wasn't aware" that a team had been deployed there, which suggests the administration’s move was as hasty and incompetently planned as everything else they have ever done.
In Trump's unhinged, hour-long froth-fest at state governors, Barr parroted Trump's own call for governors to "dominate" the streets. The same "dominate" call was echoed by Trump Defense Secretary Mark Esper—who for some reason was included in the call with governors.
"We need to dominate the battlespace," Esper told the governors.
"I think the sooner that you mass and dominate the battlespace, the quicker this dissipates and we can get back to the right normal."
It is evident that the Trump administration’s plan is to meet Black Americans daring to object to police murders with a show of overwhelming military force, including prison riot police, the National Guard, and whatever else Mark Esper believes will help "dissipate" protests and return to "the right normal."
Yet again, it makes the very point against which the protesters are protesting. White Americans wearing body armor and carrying assault rifles can storm a state capitol building demanding the state's bars and restaurants reopen and be met with a "president" telling the state's governor that the protesters have a point. Unarmed Black Americans hold protests objecting to the cold-blooded murder of a man at the hands of the police, and state governors are told by the Defense Department that they must "dominate the battlespace."
Meanwhile, thoroughly sociopathic Republican senators are going on television to demand protests be met with “the 101st Airborne” or other military combat forces, giving “no quarter.”
There are no words left. It seems impossible to imagine any scenario in which Trump and his team do not make things exponentially worse, and quickly. Prison guards. "Battlespace."
"The right normal."