Trump urges supporters to come to White House to counter protests over police murders
As protests continued to erupt across the United States — this time not for the entitled right to get a hair cut, visit a bar, or be free to go maskless and potentially spread the deadly COVID-19 virus, but for survival at the hands of seemingly unaccountable murderous police — Donald Trump is changing his tune.
When the protests fit his agenda — such as when armed white people brought their guns into the Michigan state capitol — Trump was urging them on in his tweets, telling the protestors to “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” “LIBERATE VIRGINIA,” hoping to put pressure on states to reopen their pandemic-shuttered businesses before they met CDC guidelines of falling infection rates, adequate testing, and contact tracing in a transparent attempt to salvage the economy and his prospects for re-election.
Now that the protestors are not lily-white Trump supporters and their grievances are over the deliberate murders of innocent people of color at the hands of unfettered police officers who have taken it upon themselves to serve as judge, jury, and executioner — and have congregated in large numbers in cities around the nation and at the very gates of the White House, suddenly Trump is whistling a very different tune as the White House was forced into lockdown mode.
….got too frisky or out of line, they would quickly come down on them, hard – didn’t know what hit them. The front line was replaced with fresh agents, like magic. Big crowd, professionally organized, but nobody came close to breaching the fence. If they had they would….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2020
….good practice.” As you saw last night, they were very cool & very professional. Never let it get out of hand. Thank you! On the bad side, the D.C. Mayor, @MurielBowser, who is always looking for money & help, wouldn’t let the D.C. Police get involved. “Not their job.” Nice!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2020
As pent up rage exploded, the president — normally well insulated from seeing such overwhelming reaction to the effects of his administration’s bankrupt policies, corruption, and incompetence so publically repudiated on his doorstep — betrayed the fear behind his bravado-filled tweet of praise for his first line of defense at the White House with his subsequent posts.
Ignoring the fact that the anti-lockdown protests in Michigan and other states were organized and funded by a cabal of right-wing extremist billionaires, Trump pulled his usual trick of accusing his political opponents of doing what he and his Republican party have already done in spades, alleging that the protests at the White House were “professionally managed” and had nothing to do with the police murders of unarmed African American citizens, just as he derisively dismissed the peaceful protests by black athletes who kneeled during the National Anthem as unrelated to unchecked police brutality towards minorities.
The professionally managed so-called “protesters” at the White House had little to do with the memory of George Floyd. They were just there to cause trouble. The @SecretService handled them easily. Tonight, I understand, is MAGA NIGHT AT THE WHITE HOUSE???
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2020
Unsurprisingly for this president, rather than try to bring calm to the tensions, Trump instead appeared to call of his supporters to show up at the White House gates, presumably to confront the angry protestors with a show of force less restricted by the rules and regulations that the Secret Service and other government-employed presidential protectors must follow when they engage with public demonstrations.
Trump is apparently daring Twitter to censor his posts by making somewhat veiled threats of violence rather than outright calls for actions that would surely garner at least a warning label from the social media platform, if not an outright deletion.
The president continued to feed conspiracy theories about “organized groups” of protestors, despite the fact that it was the disorganized looting and destruction that the organized peaceful protests devolved into that has been the problem, with the combination of rage over George Floyd’s publicly viewed murder and the weeks of quarantine isolation boiling over into senseless outbursts of violence.
These are “Organized Groups” that have nothing to do with George Floyd. Sad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2020
Of course, Trump cannot allow any event to pass without using it as an opportunity to advance his own political agenda and attack any convenient Democrat involved.
In this case, he went after Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who was quick to see that the police officers involved in the deliberate killing of George Floyd were fired from the city’s force once the video evidence of the nature of the murder began to circulate widely.
Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis will never be mistaken for the late, great General Douglas McArthur or great fighter General George Patton. How come all of these places that defend so poorly are run by Liberal Democrats? Get tough and fight (and arrest the bad ones). STRENGTH!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2020
One has to suppress the urge to shout back at the computer screen when reading this particular tweet.
Trump himself will never be mistaken for McArthur, Patton, or certainly not any of our more esteemed, beloved, and effective presidents. The best comparison to past presidents for our current Oval Office occupant would be Herbert Hoover, the Republican who exacerbated the Great Depression in the 1930s before Franklin Delano Roosevelt came in to help restore the economy with the New Deal.
One is tempted to shout back at Trump: “How come all of the poorest and least educated states in the country are run by right-wing Republicans?”
It is these protestors who are getting tough and fighting — fighting an unjust system of inequality made worse by Republican tax cuts for the wealthy and contempt for the health and safety of the “essential workers” without whom the billionaire class can’t reap their economic bounty.
Trump equates “STRENGTH!” with massive amounts of police firepower without exhibiting any strength of his own — the strength to rectify injustice and be an effective and compassionate leader.
As a president who was born to hector and criticize while absolving himself of any responsibility, Trump is always on the lookout for scapegoats, so, naturally, he assigned blame for the spate of violence during the protests of the past few days on convenient targets, declining to characterize these demonstrators as “very fine people” on both sides as he did in Charlottesville a few years ago, despite the presence of armed right-wing extremists and “Boogaloo” enthusiasts among the Minneapolis protests.
It’s ANTIFA and the Radical Left. Don’t lay the blame on others!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2020
As the world waits to see what may happen tonight outside the White House, Trump will be protected inside the White House and looking out to see how large a crowd of his own supporters he can now gather.
If the progressive protestors simply don’t show up tonight, needlessly violent confrontations can be avoided and the likely largely maskless crowds of MAGA-fans can simply gather together and exchange virus particles among themselves.
Instead, if the protestors who surrounded the White House last night shift their attention to other locations, they can make their voices heard without resorting to violence and destruction.
The time to organize, gather, and defeat Trump is on election day. In the meantime, the best way to defeat Trump and stay safe during this pandemic is to continue to stay home and boycott the economy. If the economic engines in the US don’t restart quickly, then Trump’s defeat is ensured.
A bit of temporary pain may be necessary to rid the nation of both COVID-19 and the virus that has infected the White House and the nation named Donald Trump.
Follow Vinnie Longobardo on Twitter.
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