America is under attack
America is under siege. Coast to coast, America is under attack. Not by foreign enemies.
Not by terrorists. America’s under attack by goon squads of unauthorized, unneeded, and unwanted federal forces untrained in riot control and unleashed by President Donald Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr on American cities.
Among all the abuses of presidential power undertaken by Donald Trump, this is the worst yet, and the most dangerous.
It started in Portland, Ore., where nightly protests against systemic racism in police departments continued for more than 55 days after the murder of George Floyd, yet over time had grown smaller and more peaceful. Initial sparks of violence had disappeared. Until early July, when federal thugs suddenly arrived, and violence flared up again. The headline in The New York Times said it all: “Sent to Quell Unrest in Portland, Federal Agents Fan the Flames.”
Uninvited by the mayor, the governor, or Portland police officers, the Trump administration sent in hundreds of federal forces allegedly to stop the violence — which by that time no longer existed. They didn’t end the violence, they reignited it. They didn’t make things better, they made things worse, adopting tactics of Nazi storm troopers: wearing military-like camouflage uniforms with no identification or name tags, deploying tear gas, firing projectiles from paintball guns, beating peaceful protesters with clubs, and kidnapping protesters and throwing them in unmarked vans without telling them what they’d been charged with or where they were being taken.
In many ways, it’s a replay of June 1, when Barr ordered federal forces, tear gas and attack helicopters to break up another peaceful protest, in Washington’s Lafayette Square, so Trump could pose holding a Bible in front of St. John’s Church. With one big difference. In Portland, no U.S. military are involved. Why? Because, to his credit, Defense Secretary Mark Esper refuses to allow Trump to sic soldiers on American civilians.
Instead, Trump and Barr pressured Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf to send in agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Border Patrol, the Federal Protective Service and the U.S. Marshals Service — none of whom have any training in riot control or handling mass demonstrations — and none of whom have any business deploying to city streets unless the local police department requests their help.
And it doesn’t end there. As part of what he’s dubbed “Operation Legend,” 200 agents already have been deployed to Kansas City, and Trump’s announced plans to send more forces to Chicago, Albuquerque and New York — none of which have requested federal assistance and all of which have actually seen a decrease in violent crime during the pandemic.
Trump’s invasion of Portland has outraged many Republicans, including Tom Ridge, former Republican governor of Pennsylvania and the first DHS secretary, who reminded listeners to Sirius/XM radio this week: “The department was established to protect America from the everpresent threat of global terrorism. It was not established to be the president’s personal militia.” Send federal forces into American city streets? Not on his watch, said Ridge: “It would be a cold day in hell before I would consent to an uninvited, unilateral intervention into one of my cities.”
Of course, there’s no doubt why Trump’s doing this. It has nothing to do with security. It has everything to do with politics 2020. He knows this election will be a referendum on his appalling lack of leadership on the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump is trying to make the election all about “law and order.” Falsely accuse Joe Biden of wanting to defund police departments. Falsely brand Democrats as soft on crime. Falsely declare American cities (those with Democratic mayors) to be on fire. Then send federal agents in to end the violence. And, where there was no violence, to create their own violence — so Trump can take credit for stopping it.
Bill Press is syndicated by Tribune Media Services.