As Donald Trump conditions his cultists to reject any election result that doesn't include him winning, he has also continued to erect a multi-layered barricade around the White House. Or as a Washingtonian headline observed earlier this month, "The White House has become a militarized Island in Downtown D.C."
The writer of that article, Andrew Beaujon, reports that pedestrian access north of the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue has been blocked ever since the night Park Police gassed protesters so Trump could walk across the street to hoist an upside-down Bible over his head. Beaujon has gotten varying answers from Park Police and Secret Service about why it continues to be barricaded and when the blockade will end.
As actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus quipped at the Democratic convention, "Just remember, Joe Biden goes to church so regularly that he doesn't even need tear gas and a bunch of federalized troops to get there."
South of the White House, a barricade now blocks almost the entire sightline of The People's House from Constitution Avenue. Here's what it currently looks like.
For comparison’s sake, here's a picture from the Ellipse in 2004, for instance, when the country was still in the grip of a post-9/11 heightened alert. That was basically the sightline that extended all the way from Constitution Avenue to the White House.
Volunteers help fold up one of the newest blocks of the AIDS Quilt, which was being displayed at the Ellipse June 26, 2004, in Washington, DC.
No one is as big a coward as Donald Trump. Not George W. Bush in the age of terror. And not Franklin D. Roosevelt at the outset of World War II. When the Secret Service suggested ringing the White House with sandbags stacked 15-feet high, Roosevelt declined.
Some sort of wrought-iron fence has been the fixture surrounding the White House for more than a century. Part of the point was to maintain some semblance of public access. But Trump has now fortified the fencing with barricades around much of the perimeter that remain long past the height of the Black Lives Matters protests following the killing of George Floyd.
At the same time, Trump is telling reporters in high-profile interviews that he isn't sure if he'll accept the results of the election. "I have to see," Trump said last month when asked by Fox News’ Chris Wallace. "I'm not just going to say yes, I'm not going to say no."
But Trump's latest plot is ensuring that his biggest fans distrust exactly what most polls currently suggest is the most likely outcome of this election—Trump's defeat.
"The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election," Trump said Monday, addressing a crowd shortly after the opening of the GOP convention.
