Two things Trump had clearly never read,
and would never agree with:
That book, which said it's easier for a camel to go through
the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into Heaven;
and that sign, which says, "ALL ARE WELCOME."
June 1, 2020: Donald Trump poses for what he believes will be the photo opportunity that will get him re-elected President of the United States. As with 99 percent of all the things he has ever done, he turns out to be wrong.
Seven days earlier, on May 25, a black man named George Floyd died in Minneapolis. He was 46 years old. The cause was asphyxiation. He had been arrested by police officers on a charge of using counterfeit money. As a means of restraining him, Officer Derek Chauvin, a white man, had knelt on Floyd's neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds.
Three other officers kept onlookers back, preventing them from interfering on Floyd's behalf. His last words, echoing those of Eric Garner, a black New Yorker killed through police brutality in 2014, were, "I can't breathe." This was captured on video, and it "went viral," sparking outrage across the country.
The group Black Lives Matter (BLM) had started in 2013, in response to previous examples of police brutality. Floyd's murder led them to launch protest marches, despite the COVID epidemic being in full swing.
Among their protests was one in Washington, D.C., gathering on H Street, a block north of Pennsylvania Avenue, in front of the north gate of the White House on May 29. This infuriated Trump, who believes that black lives don't matter. He hid in the bunker underneath the White House, a facility designed to withstand a nuclear attack. Built on the orders of Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II, only one other President has ever used it: George W. Bush, on September 11, 2001, which, at least briefly, was justified. John F. Kennedy did not use it during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962.
The thousands of demonstrators wouldn't go away, staying throughout the weekend. They committed no acts of violence, but, down in his bunker, the Twitter-addicted Trump kept tweeting about how they were "destroying" the nation's capital, the way they had done to Minneapolis and to Portland, Oregon, examples which were also lies.
On the morning of Monday, June 1, Trump held a Cabinet meeting, and said the violence (which was not happening) made him look "weak." The one thing Trump hates more than nonwhite people is people who look weak.
He discussed invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807. It empowers the President to nationally deploy the U.S. military, and to federalize the National Guard units of the individual states, in specific circumstances, such as the suppression of civil disorder, of insurrection, and of armed rebellion against the federal government of the U.S. The Insurrection Act provides a statutory exception to the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which limits the president's deploying the U.S. military to enforce either civil law or criminal law within the United States.
Invoking the Insurrection Act was favored by Vice President Mike Pence -- the events of the following January 6 making this a retroactive irony -- but opposed by Attorney General William Barr, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley. And it would have been Esper and Milley who would have to carry out any orders Trump gave under the Act.
Trump shouted, "None of you have any backbone to stand up to the violence!" and asked Milley why soldiers could not shoot protesters. "Can't you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something." It had been 50 years since the Ohio National Guard had shot 13 demonstrators, killing 4 of them, at a protest against the Vietnam War at Kent State University in Ohio. Now, Trump wanted a "Kent State" on a massive scale. (It had been 88 years since the U.S. Army shot at the "Bonus Army" on Capitol Hill. That time, 2 protestors died.)
At 5:05 PM, a convoy of 9 trucks carrying uniformed National Guard troops entered the White House complex. At 6:23, 6:26 and 6:28, Park Police made announcements directing protesters to leave. They did not. At 6:32, policemen with riot shields moved up into H Street and 16th Street. At 6:36, a SWAT team threw a "stingball" grenade, containing rubber pellets, into the crowd. At 6:39, a SWAT officer threw a smoke grenade into the crowd.
At 6:43, in the Rose Garden on the south side of the White House, the other side from the demonstration, Trump gave a speech. He spoke for 7 minutes, saying variations on his usual garbage, and concluded with "Thank you very much, and, now, I am going to pay my respects to a very, very special place."
At 7:01, he began walking with a group of White House officials, and a security detail from the White House complex, to St. John's Episcopal Church, at 1525 H Street. He got there at 7:06, and stood in front of the church, holding up a Bible -- upside-down, as if he had no clue as to how a Bible is to be held.
Trump thought the police action and the photo op would make him look like he was the only thing standing between black thugs, and the harm he was saying they were causing, and good white law-abiding Christian Americans. Instead, it made him look like a dumb and racist dictator.
"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full."
-- Jesus, quoted in Matthew 6:5
James Mattis, who had served as Secretary of Defense in the 1st 2 years of the Trump Administration, and had previously been a 4-star General in the U.S. Marine Corps, said this:
When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered, under any circumstance, to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens, much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.
Four days later, on June 5, Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington named a 2-block section of 16th Street "Black Lives Matter Plaza." She ordered "BLACK LIVES MATTER" to be painted in bright yellow letters on the black asphalt of the street, so that Trump would have to see it when he looked out that side of the White House, and when he went overhead in the Marine One helicopter.
The Presidential election was held 5 months later. Trump won the white vote, 58 percent to 41; but lost the black vote, 87-12; lost the Latino vote, 65-33; and lost the Asian vote, 63-36. He won Protestants, 60-39; but lost Catholics, 52-47, despite his opposition to abortion; lost Jews, 76-22; and lost people who professed no religion, 65-31. He lost gay people, 67-30; and straight people, 50-48.
Voting by age was interesting. People old enough to remember the police bashing antiwar demonstrators in the 1960s and 1970s, and old enough to need Social Security and Medicare, would seem to lean Democratic. But many people get more conservative as they get older, and prefer to see police beating up protestors.
So Trump won people age 65 and up, 52-47; and people 50-64 by the same margin. These were people for whom the defining Republican President was Ronald Reagan. He lost people 40-49, 54-44; 30-39, 51-46; and 25-29, 54-43. These were people for whom the defining Republican President was the failed George W. Bush. Trump lost people 18-24, for whom he was the defining Republican President, 65-31.
*
June 1, 2020 was a Monday. All professional sports were still on hold due to the pandemic. Therefore, there were no scores on this historic day.
No comments:
Post a Comment