It’s not bad enough that he pitted Federal officers, mounted officers and U.S. active-duty troops against a peaceful protest, what Trump really wanted to do was send in the tanks.
On Tuesday, The Daily Beast detailed how President Donald Trump himself has been behind the push to use the military to control the protests against the police killing of George Floyd — to the extent that he actually asked about specific military equipment that would be available for that purpose.
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“These Pentagon officials added that it was the White House, not the Defense Department, that was pushing for active military might in the streets,” continued the report. “In particular, the president has pressed aides and Pentagon officials for graphic details on the kind of armored vehicles, military units, aircraft, and even ‘tanks’ that they could potentially send to maintain order in U.S. areas rocked by protests and rioting, according to two people familiar with recent discussions.”
Now Trump has already tried to have a parade of tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Ave. and that idea has been shot down because they tend to destroy the road. Now he wants to use them against protestors?
This is all on top of the fact that Trump doesn’t seem to know who the protestors are, to him and his former attorney John Dowd, they’re all terrorists.
Trump's former attorney John Dowd in the letter is describing the protesters who were dispersed from Lafayette Park outside the White House on Monday by police using rubber bullets and tear gas so the president could stage a photo-op holding a bible.
No evidence from witness accounts or video footage of the demonstration indicates that the protesters were engaged in violence.
In the letter, Dowd claims that "the peaceful protesters near Lafayette Park were not peaceful and are not real. They are terrorists using idle hate filled students to burn and destroy."
You know people are lying to you when their story doesn’t line up. They claimed that they didn’t use “tear gas”, but instead used pellets which the CDC qualifies as “tear gas.” They claimed that the protestors were throwing water bottles [What you were hit by a stray Aquafini?] when not a single camera — and there were plenty of them — was able to capture this event. They said they had to attack because they had “no other choice.” They said they did it because of “drug traffickers.” And then Bill Barr said there was no correlation between clearing the park and Trump’s photo-op, except for the fact that Trump specifically stated in his speech that he was about to deploy troops against the “rioters.”
So that’s all bad, and explains why Trump was slammed by his own former Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis.
We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict— a false conflict — between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are apart. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.
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Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people —does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.
This sentiment has now been echoed by former Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly.
“The idea you would unleash American active duty folks unless it’s an extreme situation… the troops hate it,” Kelly said. “They don’t see it as their jobs. They don’t want to be used in that way.”
“The separation of powers is very very important,” he said. “No president ever is a dictator or a king.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Kelly suggested that Americans need to do a better job of picking their leaders.
“I think we need to look harder at who we elect,” he said. “What is their character like. What are their ethics. Are they willing… to represent all of their constituents, not just the base.
Former Defense Secretary William Cohen had a thing to say about it also.
During an appearance on CNN on Friday morning, former Defense Secretary William Cohen – who also served in the U.S. Senate as a Republican — denounced Donald Trump in no uncertain terms, saying his use of military personnel against anti-police brutality protesters is a sign he has set the country on the path to a dictatorship.
To emphasize his point, he later called Trump the “dictator-in-chief.”
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“What does it mean for you to hear a sitting president dismissing a whole range of protesters, who in fact were largely peaceful around the White House, dismissing a whole range of them as terrorists? What does that mean to you?” the CNN host asked.
“It means that he has no understanding of what the rule of law really means in this country,” Cohen began. “He has declared he wants to be the ‘president of law and order,’ but that’s not what the declaration of this country is.”
Just to sum up, here’s how my favorite pair of Christians from Middle America Vin and Sori thought of Trump's power play at St. Johns. Sori was a Trump supporter, apparently not so much anymore.
When you’re so Fascist they notice it in Middle America, I think you’ve lost the farm.
Friday, Jun 5, 2020 · 6:57:00 PM +00:00
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Frank Vyan Walton
For the record, here's some of what the first amendment guarantees.
Right to Assemble / Right to Petition
The right to assemble allows people to gather for peaceful and lawful purposes. Implicit within this right is the right to association and belief. The Supreme Court has expressly recognized that a right to freedom of association and belief is implicit in the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Freedom of assembly is recognized as a human right under article 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights under article 20. This implicit right is limited to the right to associate for First Amendment purposes. It does not include a right of social association. The government may prohibit people from knowingly associating in groups that engage and promote illegal activities. The right to associate also prohibits the government from requiring a group to register or disclose its members or from denying government benefits on the basis of an individual's current or past membership in a particular group. There are exceptions to this rule where the Court finds that governmental interests in disclosure/registration outweigh interference with First Amendment rights. The government may also, generally, not compel individuals to express themselves, hold certain beliefs, or belong to particular associations or groups.
The right to petition the government for a redress of grievances guarantees people the right to ask the government to provide relief for a wrong through litigation or other governmental action. It works with the right of assembly by allowing people to join together and seek change from the government.