The Brutality Is The Point
By Charlie Sykes for The Bulwark. June 2, 2020.
Let’s start with a moment of clarity. As Susan Glasser noted, the president of the United States “appears to have just ordered the gassing of peaceful American protesters in order to stage a photo op.”
Trump didn’t go into St. John’s Church. He didn’t even pretend to survey the damage at the church. He offered no words of solace. He just stood in front of the church and awkwardly held up a Bible.
Before he arrived, police expelled a priest and seminarian from the church’s patio as part of their sweep. “They turned holy ground into a battleground,” said the Rev. Gini Gerbasi.
Afterward, DC’s Episcopal bishop said she was outraged by the stunt. “The President did not pray when he came to St. John’s, nor… did he acknowledge the agony of our country right now,” Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde told CNN. “And I just want the world to know, that we in the diocese of Washington, following Jesus and his way of love … we distance ourselves from the incendiary language of this President. We follow someone who lived a life of nonviolence and sacrificial love.”
In today’s Bulwark, Hannah Yoest recounts what happened:Before the president came out to speak, peaceful protesters gathered on the north side of Lafayette Square—where the buildings were still covered in graffiti from the night before, when police beat back protesters with tear gas, flash bangs, and pepper spray. Waiting for the president’s address, the protesters chanted “Hands up don’t shoot,” “Take a knee,” and “Lock them up.” At 6 p.m.—an hour before the curfew of 7 p.m., newly instituted that day by Mayor Muriel Bowser—the D.C. National Guard joined police in riot gear on the other side of barriers erected along the Square.It had been announced that the president would speak at 6:15, but the Rose Garden podium remained empty. At about 6:35, the police began to fire tear gas and flash bangs against the crowd to clear the roads in front of Lafayette Square. Police then charged the protesters, violently beating them back.All this happened within earshot of the reporters still waiting in the Rose Garden, who looked around as they heard the commotion. It is under these conditions that the president finally walked out to deliver a speech in which he declared himself “an ally of all peaceful protesters” before then threatening to deploy the U.S. military if governors fail to end the riots.Watch this scene from Australian TV:
What was the photo op all about? Sources in the White House says that Trump staged the walk to St. John’s church in part because he was upset over coverage of him hiding in the White House bunker. Of course there’s more to the story.
Trump began the day by berating governors, accusing them of being “weak,” and urging them to “dominate” the protesters. “You have to dominate, if you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time,” he said. “They’re going to run over you. You’re going to look like a bunch of jerks.”Perhaps coincidentally, he had just gotten off the phone with Vladimir Putin. (This is not a parody.) As our colleague noted:
As we know, Trump is obsessed with fears that the rest of the world (and especially his strongman buddies) may be “laughing” at, or “spitting on” the United States because they detect weakness. Yesterday, he may have had an audience of one in mind when he launched his show of strength.
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By any measure it was an extraordinary moment. The Wapo’s Phil Rucker tweeted:
But in other ways, Trump’s strutting display of force was wholly consistent with the posture he’s been striking for years: his voluble admiration for brutal shows of force and a taste for atrocities and war crimes.
In the 1990s, he was critical of Mikhail Gorbachev, for not having “a firm enough hand” when confronted with “the demonstrations and picketing.” In contrast, he expressed admiration for the way the Chinese government had showed “strength” in Tiannenman Square.”When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength,” Trump said at the time. “That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak…as being spit on by the rest of the world.”During the 2016 campaign, Andrew Sullivan noted, Trump exulted in “telling war crime stories on the stump, in particular the apocryphal one of General Pershing killing Muslims with bullets dipped in the blood of pigs to terrorize others.”
During the same campaign, Arnold Serwer recalled,
He vowed to impose torture techniques “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.” Trump declared that he would “take out the families” of terrorist suspects, assuring skeptics that the military would not refuse his commands, even though service members have a duty to refuse orders that are manifestly illegal. “If I say do it, they’re going to do it.”**
During his conference call with the governors, Trump also urged them not to be too “careful,” in exacting what he called “retribution” against rioters. “Someone throwing a rock is like shooting a gun,” Trump told them. “You have to do retribution.”
This also is not a new tone. In 2017, Trump gave a speech encouraging cops to be rougher on suspects.
They’re rough. I don’t want to be — say it because they’ll say that’s not politically correct. You’re not allowed to have rough people doing this kind of work. And when you see these towns and when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon — you just see them thrown in, rough — I said, please don’t be too nice. (Laughter.) Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over? Like, don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody — don’t hit their head. I said, you can take the hand away, okay? (Laughter and applause.)
Exit take: We also got a glimpse of trickle down Trumpism. Before the attack on the peaceful protesters, Senator Tom Cotton mused about using active military units to quell disturbances, declaring that they should give “no quarter” for “insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters.”
David French had to school him:
In today’s Bulwark, Shay Khatiri writes that Cotton should have known better. “Someone with so much experience should not speak as stupidly and crudely about the military as Cotton did on Monday,” he writes.
But, remember: in TrumpWorld, the brutality is the point.
