The Washington Post on Trump’s odious photo-op yesterday:
[T]he amount of “guts” demonstrated by the photo … depends on your acceptance or understanding of how much effort went into making the trip possible.
First and foremost was the removal by force of protesters who were demonstrating peacefully in the park between the White House and the church. Shortly before Trump began speaking to reporters in the Rose Garden, insisting that he was an “ally of all peaceful protesters,” police and members of the National Guard began clearing the area. Those at the scene indicated that the security forces used tear gas, concussion devices and physical strength to scatter demonstrators before the president arrived. Clergy working at the church, aiding protesters, were caught in the cloud of gas and forced out of the way.
That incident quickly became notorious. It speaks for itself in terms of the scale of preparation required for Trump’s trip out of the White House — a trip, later reporting indicated, spurred by Trump’s frustration over reports that he was moved to a secure area of the mansion during Friday night’s demonstrations.
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They couldn’t have been more obvious that this was a photo-op for a campaign ad. Late last night they put this out:
[T]he idea that this particular jaunt demanded exceptional bravery is undercut by the scale of the protective efforts shown by the video itself.
It opens with the same shot of the White House. In the small stretch of roofline visible between trees, we see three people standing guard. This is normal; there are always protective personnel stationed there. As the first shot of the video, though, it establishes the pattern: The president can do what he does because he has people watching over him.
The video shows Trump walking from the mansion across the North Lawn. A number of staffers are on the path behind him, including Attorney General William P. Barr. Arrayed around him in a semicircle are a number of Secret Service and other security officials. There is another Secret Service agent to his right on the sidewalk.
Another shot shows Trump walking through Lafayette Square, which an hour earlier had been filled with protesters. The pool reporter covering the White House on Monday indicated that she and others traveling with the president were left “coughing and choking” from remnants of the gas used to clear the area.
It’s hard to pick out members of the Secret Service in particular, but there are clearly several visible.
As Trump arrives at the church, the presence of security is obvious. Several members of the Secret Service arrive with Trump, and a loose phalanx of police is arrayed on the sidewalk ahead of his arrival. Most are looking outward, away from Trump, scanning for possible threats. The man at far right in the still below is accompanied by a police dog.
Notice that in the still above, Trump does not have the Bible he is shown holding up in front of the church, a central element in the photos he came to take. As he departs the church, accompanied by his security detail, he is holding it.
As he heads back to the White House after exiting Lafayette Square, the full scale of the security measures deployed on his behalf is made obvious: dozens of police in riot gear, holding shields and batons form a protective corridor for the president. He gives them a fist-pump of support.
On his way back to the White House, Secret Service agents lead the way, and armed personnel watch from above.
Again, the president should and must be protected. The intent is that the president should be able to operate without constraints imposed by security concerns.AD
What’s different in this case is that the president is using that protective bubble in an effort to demonstrate his own strength. He is co-opting the necessary measures used to keep him safe in order to send a message to the American public that, far from hiding in a bunker, he is confident walking in the streets. Who wouldn’t be, when the streets are lined with armed men who work for you?
Of course the wingnuts got all sweaty and aroused over their cowardly, fake, celebrity, photo-op Dear Leader:
By the way, when they cleared the protesters they also cleared out the priests at the church Trump needed for his photo-op.
The photo opportunity had an eerie quality: Trump said relatively little, positioned stoically in front of the boarded-up church, which had been damaged the day before in a fire during protests sparked by the death of George Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis.
The church appeared to be completely abandoned.
It was, in fact, abandoned, but not by choice: Less than an hour before Trump’s arrival, armored police used tear gas to clear hundreds of peaceful demonstrators from Lafayette Square park, which is across the street from the church.
Authorities also expelled at least one Episcopal priest and a seminarian from the church’s patio. “They turned holy ground into a battleground,” said the Rev. Gini Gerbasi.
Gerbasi, who serves as rector at a different St. John’s Episcopal Church, in nearby Georgetown, arrived at St. John’s Lafayette earlier that day with what she said were at least 20 other priests and a group of laypeople. They were organized by the Episcopal Diocese of Washington to serve as a “peaceful presence in support of protesters.”
The volunteers and clergy offered water, snacks and hand sanitizer to demonstrators who were gathered in Lafayette Park across the street — which sits directly in front of the White House — to denounce racism and police brutality after the death of Floyd.
But sometime after 6 in the evening, when volunteers were packing up supplies, Gerbasi said police suddenly began to expel demonstrators from the park — before the 7 p.m. curfew announced for Washington residents earlier in the day. “I was suddenly coughing from the tear gas,” she said. “We heard those explosions and people would drop to the ground because you weren’t sure what it was.”
The Rev. Glenna J. Huber, rector of the Church of the Epiphany, another downtown Washington church, was at St. John’s but left as the National Guard arrived. She said she watched as police rushed into the area she had just fled. Concerned, the priest sent a frantic email to clergy at the church urging them to be careful.
Back at St. John’s, Gerbasi said she was dressed in clerical garb and standing on church grounds as police approached. “I’m there in my little pink sweater in my collar, my gray hair up in a ponytail, my reading glasses on, and my seminarian who was with me — she got tear gas in her eyes,” she said.
Gerbasi said that as she and the seminarian watched, police began to expel people from the church patio. “The police in their riot gear with their black shields and the whole bit start pushing on to the patio of St. John’s Lafayette Square,” she said, adding that people around her began crying out in pain, saying they had been shot with nonlethal projectiles.
Gerbasi and others eventually fled the scene, leaving emergency medical supplies behind. By the time she reached K Street several blocks away and checked her phone, Trump was already in front of the church holding a Bible.
“That’s what it was for: to clear that patio so that man could stand in front of that building with a Bible,” said Gerbasi.
He has defiled every other institution in the country. Yesterday he finally got the military and the church.