Somehow, William Barr thinks he can slither out of his responsibility for the police aggression at the White House last Monday.
“They told me they were about to make the announcement and I think they stretched the announcements over 20 minutes. During the time I was there, I would periodically hear announcements,” Barr said. “They had the Park Police mounted unit ready, so it was just a matter of execution. So, I didn’t just say to them, ‘Go.’”
Barr said it was a Park Police tactical commander — an official he never spoke to — who gave the order for the law enforcement agencies to move in and clear the protesters.
“I’m not involved in giving tactical commands like that,” he said. “I was frustrated and I was also worried that as the crowd grew, it was going to be harder and harder to do. So my attitude was get it done, but I didn’t say, ‘Go do it.’”
Barr insisted there was no connection between the heavy-handed crackdown on the protesters and Trump’s walk soon after to St. John’s Church. The attorney general said he had learned in the afternoon that Trump wanted to go outside, and said that when he went to the White House in the evening, he learned of the president’s intended destination.
Ok. Sure. That makes sense. We all saw him come down and “review” the troops before Trump was scheduled to come out and demand that police dominate the streets of America. And we know he has a “command center” in DC’s Chinatown and that he has been directing the response in DC and the federal response around the country. And he admits that he was frustrated and “his attitude” was “get it done.”
But he didn’t stand up in the moment and yell “Charge!” in that moment so he wasn’t responsible.
Moreover, it’s pretty obvious that they wanted those scenes of tear-gassing protesters and hitting them with shields and batons to clear the way for Dear Leader to give that speech in which he demanded that governors and mayors do just that.
Barr and Trump both have a little problem taking responsibility for their actions.
Our right-leaning counterparts have invested decades into promoting the idea that if they win, it’s because they have the mandate of the people in what truly must be a right-leaning country. And if they lose, well, it’s because those dastardly Others cheated. Massively.
Massive, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. The Heritage Foundation sees fit to reach back to 1948 to pad out the numbers in its “1,088 proven instances of voter fraud” among hundreds of millions of votes cast since then. A plurality involve false registrations and fraudulent use of absentee ballots. Among 13 cases of “Impersonation Fraud at the Polls” are cases of election workers running the poll and one by a man wanting to demonstrate how easy it is to impersonate someone at the polls.
“All levels of government and Law Enforcement are watching carefully for VOTER FRAUD, including during EARLY VOTING,” Trump tweeted shortly before the 2018 mid-term elections. “Cheat at your own peril. Violators will be subject to maximum penalties, both civil and criminal!”
Naturally, those threats about cheating are meant for Democrats. IOKIYAR.
Take Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer recently charged with murder in the death of George Floyd. (You may have heard of it.) It seems Chauvin may have voted improperly in Florida in both 2016 and 2018:
Derek Michael Chauvin, 44, is listed as having property in both Oakdale, Minn., and Windermere, Fla. On Friday, Dan Helm, a Florida attorney and candidate for Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections, asked Orange County State Attorney Aramis Ayala to prosecute Chauvin for violating the state’s election laws when he voted in Florida elections. Helm said the violation is a third-degree felony.
Orange County, Fla., voting records list Chauvin as an active voter and affiliated with the Republican Party of Florida.
In an e-mail Friday, Helm told the Star Tribune that he checked the county’s voter file after learning Chauvin had property there. “When I learned he voted here to influence our elections, while living in Minnesota, I was outraged,” said Helm, who described himself as active in voter protection efforts in Florida.
Working and (presumably) paying taxes in Minnesota over his 19 years with the Minneapolis Police Department would make Chauvin ineligible to claim Florida residency. Heaven forfend Chauvin also voted in Minnesota in those same elections!
Maybe it’s a Florida thing. Huffington Post reports on the voting habits of the White House’s new secretary of press disinformation and her boss, Donald J. Trump:
Kayleigh McEnany cast Florida ballots in 2018 using her parents’ address in Tampa, even though she lived in Washington, D.C., and held a New Jersey driver’s license. Trump cast a Florida ballot this year using a business address in Palm Beach, where he had promised the town government he would not live.
Trump signed an agreement nearly three decades ago that his Mar-a-Lago social club would not be used as a private residence. Florida law, HuffPost adds, does not permit a business address (including a social club) to be used as a residential address for voter registration.
McEnany voted in both the 2018 primary and general elections in Florida using her parents’ waterfront address in Tampa as her legal residence rather than the house she and her husband bought in 2017, located a mile and half away ― all while living and working in Washington as a full-time employee of the Republican National Committee.
At the time, McEnany’s driver’s license and car registration showed an address in Edgewater, New Jersey. Those documents can only be obtained by proving residency in that state, according to the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission website.
McEnany has since changed her legal residence to her own house in Hillsborough County. Voting by mail 11 times in 10 years has not dissuaded her from condemning the practice as her boss does.
Maybe it’s a Florida thing.
Conservative bomb-thrower Ann Coulter faced a couple of dust-ups over her voter absentee voting. Connecticut dismissed a complaint alleging she fraudulently used her parents’ New Canaan address to cast absentee ballots in 2002 and 2004.
Then in 2006, she moved to Florida where Coulter allegedly falsified her registration address and voted there. Coulter listed “999 Indian Rd” in Palm Beach as her residence, having never lived there. “The Indian Road address is that of Coulter’s Real Estate agent and her husband David,” the Brad Blog reported.
“She never lived here,” Suzanne Frisbie, owner of the Indian Road home, told the Palm Beach Post. “I’m Ann’s Realtor, and she used this address to forward mail when she moved from New York.”
And what happened with that? This was, after all, a period when the Bush administration was firing U.S. attorneys for not pursuing voter fraud with sufficient vigor.
Coulter was cleared of wrongdoing after intervention by the FBI with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. And not just any FBI agent, reported the Palm Beach Post, but “Supervisory Special Agent Jim Fitzgerald, of the FBI Academy’s Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico, Va. — the closest reality gets to the serial-killer catchers on CBS’ Criminal Minds.”
The Palm Beach Post links are now dead, but Harpers extracts this:
County Supervisor of Elections Arthur Anderson, meanwhile, decried what he called “FBI intrusion.” He referred the Coulter case to PBSO after poll worker Jim Whited originally reported the incident. “This doesn’t bode well in terms of the public’s impression that celebrities receive preferential treatment,” Anderson said. “I’m curious about how anyone can justify the FBI’s intrusion.”
First-year Detective Kristine Villa in December was assigned the job of investigating whether Coulter committed a felony in February 2006, when she cast her ballot in the wrong precinct in a Palm Beach election after registering to an address that wasn’t hers.Villa’s report leaves the clear impression that Coulter’s attorney, Miami’s Marcos Jimenez, stonewalled Villa for five months—at times agreeing to make Coulter available, at others reneging, often not returning calls promptly or claiming not to be able to reach his client.
But hey, if you’re white and blonde (blonde-ish in Trump’s case), it’s all good, as your intentions are assumed to be. Not so for the Others. You know, THEM. As I’ve written before:
Nice, decent white people wake up on Election Day, shower, dress, eat breakfast, then go the polls to do their patriotic duty by casting their votes. OTHERS — Poors numbering in the invisible millions — are not like US. They go instead to commit felonies punishable by five years in prison and a $10,000 fine for each offense just to add a single extra vote to their team’s total.
And those hordes of invisible malefactors must be stopped before they cheat (and Republicans lose) again.
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like. Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.
I think the protests are making a difference. The whole country has had its consciousness raised on the issue of police violence. There will be changes.
Voter registrations, volunteer activity and donations for groups linked to Democratic causes are surging in the midst of protests following the death of George Floyd, according to voting advocacy groups.
This surge in registrations could end up being one of the factors that helps tip the election this fall between apparent Democratic nominee Joe Biden and President Donald Trump. The efforts have spanned various organizations, including Latino voter registration groups, Rock the Vote and an organization co-chaired by former first lady Michelle Obama.
Latino voter registration groups in recent weeks have noticed an uptick in their communities mobilization to vote, particularly from younger voters. The leaders of these organizations said that many are registering after nationwide outrage directed at police brutality and the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, which has left over 100,000 dead and tens of millions jobless in the United States. Unemployment rates for Hispanic and black workers remained high at 17.6% and 16.8%, respectively, even after America added 2.5 million jobs last month.
Latino voters are a key voting bloc for whom Biden and Trump are competing. Yet polls show that Trump has largely been out of favor with the majority of the Latino community, in the wake of his administration cutting off funding to young immigrants who were brought to the country illegally and the initiation of building a border wall across the southern border. A recent survey shows 62% of registered Latino voters would back Biden over Trump.
Floyd, a black man, died in the custody of Minneapolis police officer last week. He was unarmed. The four officers who arrested him have been arrested and charged. Floyd’s death has sparked nationwide protests. Many young Latino voters, leaders of these groups said, are showing solidarity with members of the black community in their opposition to Trump.
Voto Latino, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that is looking to help Democrats overtake Trump by registering a record number of Latinos to vote, has seen a massive upswing of registrations since protests began over a week ago.
Maria Teresa Kumar, the CEO of the organization, told CNBC that the group has already surpassed its June goal of registering 20,000 people, including in the key states of Arizona and Texas, and are expected to have 50,000 Latino youth registered by Sunday. She said they’ve done extensive digital test ads in states across the country tying the need to vote to what Latinos are witnessing in the protests. She said the group has leaped over its June target of spending $140,000 in those two southwestern states, where polls show a tight race between Trump and Biden.
Now the group is preparing to invest another $300,000 as a result of their success. Kumar has previously told CNBC that they’re aiming to register at least 500,000 young Latinos by election day.
The group’s website reflects how Voto Latino is encouraging Latino voters to register to vote in connection to the protests, noting that policing, mayors and prosecutors are often determined by local elections.
“There are many ways to get involved to end police brutality and racist policing,” the website says. “Be sure to vote all the way down the ballot for leaders who will listen to us and who care about the safety and lives of our Black and brown communities.”
The demonstrations have ignited a larger push, particularly by Democratic leaders, to convince people to organize and vote in addition to peacefully protest.
“This is not an either or. This is both and to bring about real change, we both have to highlight a problem and make people in power uncomfortable, but we also have to translate that into practical solutions and laws that can be implemented and we can monitor and make sure we’re following up on,” former President Barack Obama said in a recent online address.
In other cases, voter registration groups such as When We All Vote, an organization co-chaired by Michelle Obama, are seeing big jumps in support both at the financial and volunteer level.
The group has raised over $55,000 since last week, on an increase of 70% of online donations. Over that same period of time, it signed up 1,500 new volunteers. In two days, it trained 700 people to become Voting Squad Captains who lead voter registration and engagement in their communities.
Rock the Vote, a nonprofit dedicated to registering voters that was founded by music executive Jack Ayeroff, has seen historic results in just the past week. Carolyn DeWitt, the group’s CEO, told CNBC in an interview that since June 1 they have seen over 50,000 new voters. She said it is the most voters the group has registered in a single week during the 2020 election cycle. Part of that success comes on the heels of the group recently seeing 1.4 million impressions on its social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat.
Although the group can’t make a direct link in the surge of registrations to the protests, DeWitt argued that it nonetheless suggests that voters are looking for extensive changes to their government.
“While we don’t necessarily have evidence right now until we dig into the motivations of registering at this moment, I think the urgency raised awareness that people believe change needs to happen,” DeWitt said. Rock the Vote’s online voter registration platform is used by over 1,000 partners, including Voto Latino.
Demographics of voters that were registered by Rock the Vote’s own efforts this week shows 70% were 29 and younger, 76% identified as women, 39% acknowledged they were people of color. Forty two percent of the 29-and-under group were people of color.
Mi Familia Vota, a civic engagement nonprofit, has registered up to 3,000 new voters this week throughout the states where it is based, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Texas. The group’s CEO, Hector Sanchez Barba, said in an interview with CNBC that he believes it is due to the protests that have taken place in the wake of Floyd’s death.
“We have seen solidarity with our African American brothers and sisters,” Barba said. “It’s unacceptable that we see all this racism and violence, and we are going to stand with the African American community because an attack on one is an attack on all of us.”
This article by David Ignatius covers the Mattis and Mullen statements but is almost certainly the result of leaks by Esper and Milley to cover their capitulation to Trump’s puerile photo-op on Monday. I’m glad to see it. But I can’t help but wonder if they — and others — had done this earlier we might be in a different place today:
The military establishment’s anger at President Trump’s politicization of the armed forces has been building for three years. It finally ripped open in the aftermath of Monday’s appalling presidential photo op at St. John’s Episcopal Church.
The break was a decisive moment in the Trump presidency. But such inflection points are mysterious. Why does a bridge that has carried a million vehicles suddenly collapse when one more heavy load rumbles across? It’s not a linear process but a sudden discontinuity. Mathematicians call it “catastrophe theory.”
The catastrophe Monday was that Trump was advocating what military officers dread most. He was preparing to mobilize the armed forces to suppress protests by U.S. citizens against racial injustice and police brutality. For military officers who have sworn an oath to defend the Constitution, this was overload. The structure cracked.
The most dramatic break came from retired Gen. Jim Mattis. For the 18 months since his resignation as defense secretary in December 2018, Mattis had been asserting a “duty of silence” as a former military commander not to directly criticize the president. Many had pressed Mattis to speak out, but he had been adamant.
This bridge of silence toppled Wednesday, when Mattis released a statement expressing the rage he has long felt as he watched Trump demean the military and its professionalism. Mattis wrote for the history books: “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort.”
The stage for Mattis’s excoriation was set by several prior events that are crucial in understanding Monday’s inflection point. The first was an opinion piece published in the Atlantic on Tuesday afternoon by retired Adm. Mike Mullen, former chairman of the joint chiefs. Mullen, like Mattis, had been reluctant to use his military credentials to challenge Trump.
But Mullen had reached his choke point. His piece, titled “I Cannot Remain Silent,” challenged Trump’s consideration of using active-duty troops to put down the protesters: “I am deeply worried that as they execute their orders, the members of our military will be co-opted for political purposes.” Mullen also condemned “police brutality and sustained injustices against the African American community.”
Mullen had put down a marker. Many former colleagues of Mattis wondered why he had not already made a statement like Mullen’s. When Mattis’s blistering message eventually came, it was worth the wait.
This drama has a final, largely invisible, chapter that involves Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Mark T. Esper, the defense secretary. They accompanied Trump on that walk across Lafayette Square, Milley in uniform. It was a decision they would both deeply regret.
Milley had been telling the president since late last week that it would be a mistake to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 and call out active-duty troops. Yet Trump told governors Monday that he was putting Milley “in charge” of a military response. The argument came to a head in the Oval Office that day, before the walk across Lafayette Square.
A burly man whose temper can match Trump’s, Milley was vocal in reiterating his advice to the president against mobilizing troops, according to three knowledgeable sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. Mullen and Mattis knew that Milley had taken this precarious position when they spoke out publicly, in part to support his effort to resist calling up the military. Trump hasn’t yet invoked the Insurrection Act, perhaps because he has weighed the private caution from his chief military adviser.
Milley, dressed in the baggy camouflage uniform that commanders wear in war zones, briefly wandered the streets after the church incident. It was the wrong image, but he expressed the correct sentiment the next day in a message to troops around the world: “As members of the Joint Force — comprised of all races, colors, and creeds — you embody the ideals of our Constitution.”
Esper has been walking a political tightrope, trying to support Milley without contradicting the president. That awkward two-step hasn’t worked very well, with Esper seeming to disagree with the president when he talked to the media Tuesday night and Wednesday, and then challenging reports that his views were any different from Trump’s. Like others who seek to remain in Trump’s good graces, Esper seemed to be playing both sides.
It was Esper who unintentionally offered an epitaph for this hinge moment in U.S. history. Of his walk to the church, Esper said, “I didn’t know where I was going.” Whatever he intended, Esper was allowing the armed forces to be manipulated as a political prop. The military fought back hard — and correctly — against this abuse.
I’m happy that the military has made clear their oath is to the constitution and not to the president. I’m sure it shocked Trump. He said during the 2016 campaign that “his generals” would follow any order he gave. He believes he has monarchal powers and he’s backed in that by his Attorney General Bill Barr.
It was only four months ago that with the exception of one lone vote, the Republican Party voted en masse to acquit Trump of abusing his power in only the third Impeachment trial in American history. Within days Trump was purging his administration of everyone who followed the law. A month after that he was threatening to withhold federal funds in a global pandemic if governors didn’t lick his boots.
Now he seems to literally be angling for civil war and the military is finally reacting.
TRUMP: "We built a tremendous thing, a tremendous power platform. So when it got ill, when we had a problem, we were able to cut it off, stop it, just like this, stop it. Keep everyone inside. Keep em away. Keep em together, away, uninfected. And we saved millions of lives." #wutpic.twitter.com/kLfaG3Oz3z
Trump on Covid: "If you have diabetes, or you have a bad heart — it's like a magnet. They say if you're heavy — so I say, thank goodness I'm in perfect shape — but if you're heavy it's not good." pic.twitter.com/PqEoAjCxhb
Our View: To President Trump: You should resign now
President Trump: We’re sorry that you decided to come to Maine, but since you are here, could you do us a favor? Resign.
You have never been a good president, but today your shortcomings are unleashing historic levels of suffering on the American people.
Your slow response to the coronavirus pandemic has spun a manageable crisis into the worst public health emergency since 1918.
We are also in the middle of the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. There is no national strategy to recover from the shock that is disproportionately affecting people who were already struggling to make it.
And in the face of the worst civic unrest since 1968, with millions of Americans in the streets protesting systemic racism, you fan the flames.
In just the last week you gleefully tweeted about shooting fellow citizens; you goaded governors into escalating violent situations so they don’t “look like jerks;” and you authorized the use of rubber bullets and tear gas to clear peaceful protesters out of a public space so you could pose for a Bible-waving photo-op.
These are just a few examples of why you lack the character, maturity and judgment to lead our country in this perilous time. You should resign.
We have to agree with you on one point: You were right to skip making an address to the nation as other presidents have done in times of national emergency.
You correctly concluded that you have nothing to say that would make the situation better. When what’s called for is compassion, clear vision and a commitment to lead, you are out of ammo.
But bringing the nation together in times of distress is a big part of the job when you are head of state. You can’t do it, so you should resign.
As head of government, you have unmatched power to direct resources to relieve suffering. You can’t or won’t do that, either, so you should resign.
And in your mistreatment of lawful protesters and abuse of religious symbols, you have violated your oath to protect and defend the Constitution, so you should resign.
Your supporters will no doubt say that this is an election year, and it should be left up to the voters to decide whether you deserve to stay in office.
But ask yourself – can this country take five more months like the last five? You are a president supported by a minority of the people, and your only path to victory in November is to further divide the nation. This campaign could do even more lasting damage than you have done already.
We know that you are not much of a student of history, but you recently said that you “learned a lot from Richard Nixon.”
That’s good, because he set the historical precedent for what you should do now.
In a nationally televised address, Nixon said that he knew that he was about to be impeached over Watergate, and he wanted to fight the charges.
But since that would be destructive to the nation he served, he chose instead to resign. Nixon said: “By taking this action, I hope that I will have hastened the start of that process of healing which is so desperately needed in America.”
America needs to heal again. Please resign now, and let us begin.
I know that most editorial boards are probably saying “why bother” since the election is just five months away. But they should all be demanding his resignation. As this one says, he’s always been a terrible president but 2020 has shown him to be a total catastrophe.
There is no chance he will resign, of course. We can’t even be sure that he will leave if he loses the election. But it’s important to get this all on the record and help American voters understand exactly what’s at stake.
In a single statement, Trump manages to denigrate the memory of George Floyd and his experience, while also showing an utter lack of sympathy for the plight of millions of Americans still struggling through and economic crisis.
Since becoming Donald Trump’s attorney general, Bill Barr has given several speeches to police organizations. This is not unusual for someone in his position, but Barr’s comments have often been controversial. Last December he made the outrageous comment that “communities” have to “start showing more than they do the respect and support that law enforcement deserves and if communities don’t give that respect, they might find themselves without the protection they need.” It was bad enough that it hit the evening news:
Barr’s overtly partisan behavior as attorney general has been well documented. He is the president’s No. 1 henchman, and the most openly political AG in American history. His far-right views on religion and morality are also well-known. But despite his speeches like the one above, until this week I don’t think it was well understood just how fully authoritarian Barr’s worldview really is.
He appears to believe that the title “attorney general” is an actual military designation that gives him the authority to command troops on the streets of the United States. It isn’t. (It’s actually a very old term in common law, reflecting the idea that someone may hold a “general power of attorney” to represent the state.)
In a call with state governors on Monday, when Trump demanded they “dominate” their citizens and put protesters in jail for 10 years, one of his many threats was that he would unleash Barr and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Later that day Milley was seen wandering around outside the White House in battle fatigues as if he were about to launch an attack on Fallujah, but he and the rest of the military brass have since balked at Trump’s stated desire to send in active-duty troops to “dominate” American cities.
Barr has no such reticence. The Daily Beast reported that on May 26 he immediately convened a task force to determine how the Department of Justice could find legal ways to quell the protests that were breaking out around the country. He immediately concluded that antifa and left-wing terrorists were responsible for the unrest, and determined that the feds could use the Joint Terrorist Task Forces, in partnership with state and local government, to institute a crackdown. Trump soon made a Twitter announcement that antifa would be designated a terrorist organization, despite the fact that it’s not an organization at all (and no such designation exists for domestic groups).
Barr also set about immediately assembling federal troops to man the barricades in Washington. Indeed, he seems to believe he is the commander of the White House Defense Force, whose mission is to beat back the invasion of TrumpLand. He’s the one who ordered the Robocops with “Military Police” and “Secret Service” emblazoned on their chests to tear-gas and drive back the protesters in Lafayette Square ahead of the president’s feckless photo-op on Monday evening.
Since then the streets of Washington have been full of National Guard and strange-looking quasi-military riot police without insignia or identification, producing bizarre, disturbing images such as this one:
Barr explained on Thursday that he didn’t see any reason for troops to wear any insignia because they might not want to identify themselves. That’s not how it works in a democracy.
According to Bloomberg, a document prepared for the Joint Chiefs shows that Generalissimo Barr has 2,950 civilian troops from various agencies on the streets of D.C. This is on top of an equal number of National Guard troops and 1,700 active duty troops who are stationed outside the capital (and have been the source of a confused tug-of-war between Trump and Defense Secretary Mark Esper. )
Barr is directing all of it. The Washington Post reported on Wednesday:
From an FBI command center in Washington’s Chinatown neighborhood, Attorney General William P. Barr has orchestrated a stunning show of force on the streets of the nation’s capital — a battalion of federal agents, troops and police designed to restore order, but one that critics say carries grim parallels to heavy-handed foreign regimes.
It does indeed
On Thursday morning, Barr appeared for another press conference to update the nation on the Battle of Antifa, making this claim:
We have evidence that antifa and other similar extremist groups, as well as actors of a variety of different political persuasions, have been involved in instigating and participating in the violent activity.
The “different political persuasions” he mentioned appear to be the far right. In fact, three members of the “boogaloo” movement were arrested this week on terrorism charges in Las Vegas, a fact that apparently didn’t merit specific mention. Nor did he express any concern about the reportsof armed counterprotesters menacing demonstrators in small towns.
But then Bill Barr has a history of using these events to pursue whatever political hobbyhorse he happens to be riding at the time. It’s never an opposition to police brutality, I think we can say that. Remember, this is his second go-round as attorney general. He held the same post under George H.W. Bush during the Los Angeles riots in 1992 and he handled that situation almost exactly the same way. He immediately put together a plan to get hundreds of federal troops from various agencies out to Los Angeles to quell the riots, actually commandeering an airplane and having it fly all over the country to pick up members of the Border Patrol and FBI agents and various others to “get them on the ground” in L.A.
This oral history of that event has Barr explaining what was going through his mind:
Q: Was President Bush shocked by this dramatic event in Los Angeles? Did it have an effect on him? Did he see it as an indicator of something wrong that had to be fixed in America?
Barr: I can’t tell the extent to which he was shocked. He seemed surprised and wondered what was going on, what was this all about, and why the violence, that ugly violence. He asked me. Some people would probably disagree with what I told him, but I did lay a lot of it on gang activity.
Q: And you had a program to try and deal with that kind of thing.
Barr: Yes.
Q: But that didn’t galvanize.
Barr: Well, no one stopped me. We did make a lot of progress against gangs. But he wasn’t as comfortable in that policy area, I guess. My basic take was that this was not civil unrest or the product of some festering injustice. This was gang activity, basically opportunistic. I don’t know why he wasn’t more interested in these issues.
That passage illustrates the largest single difference between then and now: the president. The senior Bush wasn’t a fool, and throughout that episode he clearly kept Barr on a tight leash. He let him put his little battalion of desk jockeys and federal cops on the ground but he didn’t indulge his military commander fantasies or allow him to declare war on street gangs and make the problem even worse.
Today we have a petulant reality TV star in the White House, who is deeply ignorant and has no patience for details. Barr is back as attorney general, and he’s been given free rein. It couldn’t be a worse combination.
My Salon column this morning reprinted with permission.
New fencing erected Thursday north of the White House. Photo: Jackson Proskow, Canada’s Global News (via Twitter).
“If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.” — David Frum, The Atlantic, January 2018
“Do [Republicans] value democracy in America enough to allow a real election to go through and to allow themselves to lose?” The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum posed to “Morning Joe” on Thursday. She’s doubtful the party leadership does. David Frum of that almost 30 months ago.
Earlier this week, CIA analysts told the Washington Post they see “disturbingly familiar” patterns in actions taken by the White House against protesters. If this were a foreign country, their reports to superiors would be warnings:
The scenes have been disturbingly familiar to CIA analysts accustomed to monitoring scenes of societal unraveling abroad — the massing of protesters, the ensuing crackdowns and the awkwardly staged displays of strength by a leader determined to project authority.
In interviews and posts on social media in recent days, current and former U.S. intelligence officials have expressed dismay at the similarity between events at home and the signs of decline or democratic regression they were trained to detect in other nations
Adding to those worries must be Thursday morning’s further barricading of the White House with another layer of fencing around the complex extending into the green spaces north and south.
Mark Elliot posted two videos contrasting the approach the current White House occupant had to taking a stroll outside the White House grounds with that of President Barack Obama. The green where Obama cheerfully greeted passersby Trump has fenced off.
The New Yorker’s Sue Halpern worries aloud how and whether the election Applebaum speculates Republicans might steal will even take place. Until now, we’ve been able to tell ourselves that if enough voters show up in November, none of Donald Trump’s administrative atrocities will matter. Now, she’s not so sure:
A few weeks ago, when I asked the legal scholar Rick Hasen about a scenario, then circulating, that laid out a “legal” way for the Trump Administration to bypass elections and keep Trump in power, he said it would lead to rioting in the streets. That was before there was rioting in the streets, which has given the Trump Administration an opportunity to mobilize U.S. soldiers to police U.S. citizens, and local governments to deploy militarized police forces that have shown little respect for constitutional rights as they fire rubber bullets, deploy tear gas, and charge and beat peaceful protesters. The spectre of violence in the streets, which horrifies most Americans, appears to energize our self-declared “law-and-order President.” Certainly, it gives cover for greater surveillance and the thwarting of dissent. On Tuesday, as voters went to the polls in eight states and the District of Columbia, with many citizens under curfew orders, we saw a whole new way to keep citizens from voting.
Even if Americans turn out to vote for Democrats in such numbers that strategic curfews, standard GOP voter suppression tactics, or other means of suppressing turnout fail to have a major impact, the acting president’s actions in Washington, D.C. this week have telegraphed how he and his enablers might respond to losing the election in November. And you thought this week was ugly.
But Trump’s poll numbers are falling. A growing chorus of respected retired military generals and admirals has begun raising the alarm about the administration’s authoritarian actions. If the trend continues, Trump’s support could collapse. However, we simply cannot plan around that.
Last Friday, I submitted my application for an absentee ballot. The requirements for submitting the actual ballot in North Carolina now are being amended in Raleigh to adapt to the pandemic. In states like mine, infections are still on the upswing. We don’t have vote-by-mail, and Republican legislators mean to make it a felony for Board of Elections staffers to send an absentee ballot application to any voter who does not formally file a request.
On top of the Trump administration’s actions to sabotage the United States Postal Service, budget cuts mean my mail goes first to South Carolina for sorting before returning here. This makes mailing in a ballot at the last minute risky. So, I dropped off my absentee ballot application into a box at the local Board of Elections. I plan to hand-deliver my ballot or drop it off at an early voting station if I choose not to vote in person. But I have mobility and flexibility others don’t.
We need to “flatten the curve” on how and when people vote this fall. Expand absentee voting as early as practicable to relieve pressure on in-person voting methods. COVID-19 means we expect to have trouble staffing polling places. Expanded use of absentee ballots means reducing lines and the risk of infection for early- and election-day voters. Think of it as a democratic strategic triad.
Mount up. If Trump is still in the White House in November, we will be facing a cornered animal desperate to hold onto power and avoid future prosecution (in NY, at least). Preserving this republic is going to be a fight. Potentially a real, not a metaphorical one. Not kidding. We’d best make it a good and strategic one. You will be the people historians write about.
Perhaps you have friends jaded enough to think the election process is hopelessly broken and corrupt. Perhaps they complain Democrats have not presented them with a silver platter of candidates custom-built to their exacting specifications. Therefore, they refuse to taint their white vinyl souls by participating.
After events in Washington this week, suggest they could be making a deadly mistake.
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like. Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.
