In an irony for the ages, we now know that the instigator of a violent insurrection against the American people in January 2021 had himself, in June 2020, inspired his aides to draw up a proclamation to invoke the Insurrection Act in order to justify the deployment of U.S. military units against American citizens. The Americans Trump wanted to target—intimidate and kill, if necessary—with this country’s military machinery were those protesting against police brutality against Black Americans, specifically the wanton murder of George Floyd.
As reported by The New York Times:
Responding to interest from President Donald J. Trump, White House aides drafted a proclamation last year to invoke the Insurrection Act in case Mr. Trump moved to take the extraordinary step of deploying active-duty troops in Washington to quell the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd, two senior Trump administration officials said.
The aides drafted the proclamation on June 1, 2020, during a heated debate inside the administration over how to respond to the protests. Mr. Trump, enraged by the demonstrations, had told the attorney general, William P. Barr, the defense secretary, Mark T. Esper, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, that he wanted thousands of active-duty troops on the streets of the nation’s capital, one of the officials said.
Trump ultimately did not invoke the Act, having been convinced it might damage him politically. Nevertheless, his trusted aides kept the proclamation at the ready for his instant signature should the unstable, irrational and pathological Oval Office occupant change his mind.
As reported by The Times, on June 1, Trump was apparently infuriated by images of protesters marching in the streets of Washington, D.C., claiming they made him “look weak.” He was also livid about the fact that media sources had reported his cowardly flight into the White House bunker, where he had sought to escape the purported danger evidently posed by the hordes of unarmed, protesting American citizens.
Doubtlessly seeing their own careers potentially going up in smoke before their eyes, Attorney General William Barr and Defense Secretary Mark Esper pushed back against Trump’s ranting delusions. They were joined by Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in this effort.
As The Times’ Michael Schmidt and Maggie Haberman point out, the Insurrection Act has only been invoked twice in the last 40 years: the first instance in response to rioting after 1989’s Hurricane Hugo, and the second in response to protests and rioting that occurred after the nationally televised police beating of Rodney King.
The Times article makes clear that the prime motivation for Trump’s fury was the fact that he had been “embarrassed on the world stage,” perhaps unaware that most of the “world” had already formulated a fixed and permanent opinion of him and his capacity as a leader. He ultimately compensated for his embarrassment by making heated phone calls to various governors, urging them to “dominate” the protesters.
It’s also clear that the situation in the White House was chaotic as Trump flailed to gain control of the media narrative.
[O]ne backdrop for the drafting of the Insurrection Act proclamation was that discussions between the White House and city officials about containing the protests remained contentious throughout the day. At one point, White House officials suggested taking over the city police force to tamp down the unrest and impose order. That idea stunned Washington city officials.
One thing we can always seem to count on, now that Trump is out of office: The more we learn, the worse it gets.