Melville
House Crashes Anti-Trump Title
Jun 08, 2020
Melville House is crashing the
publication of Authoritarian
Nightmare: Trump and His Followers by John Dean and Bob
Altermeyer.
The book, Melville
House promises , "will be the first book to look at Trump his followers in
the context of authoritarianism by using psychological diagnostic tools, as
well as polling conducted by The Monmouth University Polling Institute, to
offer an eye-opening revelation of how Trump and his supporters have gotten
where they are, and to consider where they may go next."
Dean is famous for having as
White House counsel for President Richard Nixon from 1970 to 1973. During the
Watergate scandal, his Senate testimony helped lead to Nixon's resignation.
Altermeyer is a psychology professor at the University of Manitoba who
specializes in authoritarianism.
Trump, Barr continue threat to deploy military against nationwide
protests
On Saturday, in the
midst of massive nationwide protests over the police murder of George Floyd,
President Donald Trump made clear that he has not abandoned his support for the
mobilization of the military to suppress the demonstrations. He was backed
Sunday by his attorney general William Barr, who defended Trump’s moves last
Monday to crush the protests in Washington, D.C. as part of preparations to
establish a presidential dictatorship based on the military and the police.
At 6:45 p.m. on
Saturday, while tens of thousands of protesters were marching peacefully
through the capital and hundreds of thousands more were demonstrating in cities
and towns across the country, Trump tweeted, “LAW & ORDER!” This was an
allusion to his fascistic Rose Garden declaration last Monday that he was the
“president of law and order.”
Later in the evening he
added another tweet: “Much smaller crowd in DC than anticipated. National
Guard, Secret Service and DC Police have been doing a fantastic job. Thank
you!”
Donald
Trump walks from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church. (Official
White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
On Sunday, Barr was
interviewed on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program. He ignored denunciations by top
retired military officers, including former Trump administration officials, of
Trump’s threats to overthrow the Constitution, invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act
and impose martial law.
Barr categorically
supported the right of the President to unilaterally deploy active duty troops
to states over the objections of state governors. He also falsely branded as
violent the peaceful protest at Lafayette Park that was broken up last Monday
on Trump’s orders, and absurdly claimed there was no connection between the
violent dispersal of the protesters and Trump’s photo-op holding up a Bible in
front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, which took place only minutes after
National Guard troops and federal forces had cleared demonstrators from the
location.
The interview began
with the anchor, Margaret Brennan, citing a “senior administration official”
who told CBS News that Trump, at a White House meeting early last Monday, had
demanded the ordering of 10,000 active duty troops onto the streets of the
country. According to press reports, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Mark
Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had opposed the demand,
resulting in a shouting match between Trump and Milley.
Barr called the report
“completely false.” After the interview, Brennan stated that CBS News stood by
its reporting on the incident.
Barr implied that such
a military mobilization had been discussed and acknowledged that elements of
the 82nd Airborne Division had been deployed to bases outside the capital. But
he said he and Esper agreed that those military police units should be kept on
standby but not deployed onto the streets at that time. These troops, as well
as troops from the Mountain Division, have since been removed from the D.C.
area and returned to their home bases.
Next came the following
exchange:
Brennan: Do you think
that the president has the authority to unilaterally send in active duty troops
if the governors oppose it?
Barr: Oh, absolutely.
The—under the anti-Insurrection Act, the President can use regular troops to
suppress rioting. The Confederacy in our country opposed the use of federal
troops to restore order and suppress an insurrection. So the federal government
sometimes doesn’t listen to governors in certain circumstances…”
It is highly
significant that the precedent Barr cited to justify such an action was the
Civil War, in which some 600,000 Americans were killed. Trump has given
campaign speeches in which he said any effort to remove him from office would
result in a “civil war.”
Then came the following
exchange on the violent dispersal of peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park
across from the White House:
Brennan: Did you think
it was appropriate for them to use smoke bombs, tear gas, pepper balls,
projectiles at what appeared to be peaceful protesters?
Barr: They were not
peaceful protesters. And that’s one of the big lies that the media seems to be
perpetuating at this point.
Brennan: Three of my
CBS colleagues were there. We talked to them. … They did not see protesters
throwing anything. … And the methods they used you think were appropriate, is
that what you’re saying?
Barr: When they met
resistance, yes.
Brennan then recounted
the scene last Monday in which Trump was asserting dictatorial powers and
announcing plans to prosecute left-wing “outside agitators” as terrorists at
the same time troops were moving against the Lafayette Park protesters to clear
the way for Trump’s photo-op:
Brennan: Right around
the same time the area is being cleared of what appear to be peaceful
protesters, using some force. And after the speech is finished, the President
walks out of the White House to the same area where the protesters had been and
stands for a photo op. … In an environment where the broader debate is about
heavy-handed use of force in law enforcement, was that the right message for
Americans to be receiving? ...
Barr: Well, it’s the
job of the media to tell the truth. They were not connected.
Barr’s full-throated
defense of police-military repression of protests was echoed on the Sunday
interview programs by Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of
Homeland Security. Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Wolf said, “I think we took
the right action, and what we’ve seen is we’ve seen governors deploy the
National Guard. We’ve seen governors and mayors call the federal government
asking for support. And that’s what we’ve given them.”
Pressed on the decision
to deploy 1,600 active duty troops to the outskirts of the capital by host
Chris Wallace, who asked if that was “overkill,” Wolf indicated that a military
mobilization against the protesters remained under consideration. He said, “So,
again, from a law enforcement perspective, I would say making sure that we keep
all our tools in the toolbox ready and available is very, very important. We
don’t want to take anything off the table.”
The
other dominant theme of the Sunday news programs was the public opposition of
prominent retired generals to Trump’s Rose Garden coup speech and the threat to
bring the military against demonstrators. The most significant such statement
was the column by retired Marine General James “Mad Dog” Mattis published last
Wednesday in the Atlantic . Mattis, known as the “butcher
of Fallujah” for his role in the homicidal destruction of that Iraqi city,
resigned as Trump’s secretary of defense in January of 2019 in protest against
Trump’s announced plan to withdraw US forces from Syria.
Mattis openly accused
Trump of violating the Constitution and threatening to assume dictatorial
powers. He was subsequently seconded by former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs
Mike Mullen and Martin Dempsey, retired Marine General and former White House
chief of staff to Trump John Kelly and other retired military brass.
The statements of these
military officers, all of whom have been involved in bloody crimes of US
imperialism around the world, were prompted not by devotion to democracy, but
by concerns that Trump’s authoritarian moves would trigger an uncontrollable
social explosion.
The main guest on CNN’s
“State of the Union” program was Colin Powell, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs
during the first Persian Gulf War of 1991 and Secretary of State at the time of
the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Powell was the top military officer in 1992 when
President George H. W. Bush sent in active duty troops to put down mass
protests in Los Angeles against the police beating of Rodney King.
Powell, posing as a
defender of the First Amendment, congratulated the former generals who
criticized Trump’s actions and announced that he would vote for Democrat Joe
Biden in the November presidential election.
Powell’s most
significant statement in the interview was his attack on Congress for failing
to address, let alone oppose Trump’s attempted anti-constitutional coup. He
said:
And even more
troubling, the Congress would just sit there and not in any way resist what the
President is doing…
I watched the senators
heading into the chamber the other day after all this broke, with the reporters
saying, what do you have to say, what do you to say?
They had nothing to
say.
This accurately
describes the cowardice and complicity of both big business parties in the
ongoing conspiracy against democratic rights that is centered in the White
House. The most pernicious role is being played by the Democratic Party, the
nominal “opposition” to Trump.
Not a single prominent
Democrat—from Obama, the Clintons and Biden to the fake “progressives” Bernie
Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—has warned the American
people of the coup plans of Trump and his cabal of fascists in the White House.
This continued Sunday.
Democrats interviewed on the talk shows included Senator Cory Booker,
Representative Karen Bass, the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus,
and Representative Val Demings, a former police chief in Florida who is on
Biden’s “short list” to become his running mate. None of them even mentioned
Trump’s Rose Garden speech and threats to impose martial law. As the military
considers its options, the Democratic Party is allowing it to become the
arbiter of the people’s democratic rights.
The Democrats are no
less fearful than Trump and the Republicans that the multiracial and
multiethnic protests against police violence will encourage a broader movement
of the working class, already slammed by mass death and unemployment resulting
from the official response to the coronavirus pandemic, which will assume
revolutionary proportions.
The Most Shameful Stunt of Trump’s Presidency
Unleashing tear gas and rubber bullets for a
photo op is his most dictatorial move yet.
June 2,
2020
The White House/Flickr
I had it in my mind that I would write something about
the odd way that President Trump physically handles the Holy Bible, but I
hadn’t come up with anything specific before I saw how McKay Coppins went about it:
He wielded the Bible like a foreign object, awkwardly
adjusting his grip as though trying to get comfortable. He examined its cover.
He held it up over his right shoulder like a crossing guard presenting a stop
sign. He did not open it.
“Is that your Bible?” a reporter asked.
“It’s a Bible,” the president replied.
I misread this the first time I looked at it. I thought
Coppins was asking me to picture President Trump holding a red octagonal sign
like he was presenting a gift. On my second reading, I understood he instead
meant that Trump looked like a crossing guard holding up traffic, only with a
Bible in his hand.
Either image does the job of conveying that there’s
something unnatural going on. When Trump flashed the Bible on Monday at St.
John’s Church near Washington’s Lafayette Park, he was holding it upside down
and backwards, almost as if the book—or any book—has an
unknown purpose.
This made is painfully clear that he was using the Bible
as a prop, and that his appearance in front of the church was an effort to
pander to the religious right.
In order to reach the location of the photo op, a block
from the White House, he used the National Guard and the Secret Service to
disperse protestors in his path. They utilized tear-gas and flash-bang grenades
and rubber bullets to clear Lafayette Park, even though it was only a half hour before an
announced citywide curfew and there had been no violence or other threatening
disturbances.
Linda Tirado, a freelance photojournalist, was blinded in her left eye by a rubber bullet in Minneapolis.
She also lacks heath insurance and is looking perhaps at almost a quarter
million dollars in health care costs. Rubber bullets are no joke.
My coworker's cousin was at a protest at
sunset in San Diego yesterday when she was hit right between the eyes with a
rubber bullet. She's been unresponsive ever since, currently in the ICU. She
only went because her son had been killed by a cop; she felt she couldn't stay
home.
As for tear gas, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention says , “prolonged
exposure, especially in an enclosed area, may lead to long-term effects such as
eye problems including scarring, glaucoma, and cataracts, and may possibly cause
breathing problems such as asthma.”
Using tear gas outside is less likely to cause serious
harm, but it’s not without risks. It’s highly immoral to blast tear gas and
rubber bullets into a crowd without a corresponding risk you’re looking to
counteract.
In this case, the risk was that some harm would come to
the president of the United States if he attempted to stroll through Lafayette
Park while the crowds were still there. But all risk could have been avoided if
Trump had decided that a visit to St. John’s Church a half an hour before
curfew wasn’t a good idea.
No one in the White House thought to notify the Church that they were coming, and this brought
severe condemnation from both the city’s Episcopalian bishop and St. John’s
presiding priest:
The Rt. Rev. Mariann Budde, the bishop of Washington who
helped organize the clergy presence at the church, said Trump’s arrival at St.
John’s happened without warning and left her “outraged.”
“The symbolism of him holding a Bible … as a prop and
standing in front of our church as a backdrop when everything that he has said
is antithetical to the teachings of our traditions and what we stand for as a
church — I was horrified,” she told Religion News Service.
“He didn’t come to pray. He didn’t come to lament the
death of George Floyd. He didn’t come to address the deep wounds that are being
expressed through peaceful protest by the thousands upon thousands. He didn’t
try to bring calm to situations that are exploding with pain.”
The Rt. Rev. Michael Curry, presiding bishop of the
Episcopal Church, also criticized the move, accusing the president of using “a
church building and the Holy Bible for partisan political purposes.”
The president’s behavior was widely criticized throughout
the capital, but some on his campaign team believed it had been a success.
By late Monday, campaign officials were already tweeting
a black-and-white photo of him walking to the church with a coterie of aides in
his wake. Tim Murtaugh, the campaign’s top spokesman, posted the picture
without a caption.
This was just one incident in an extremely violent day
that saw the president implore the nation’s governors to get tough and “ dominate ” and then watched many of them try to comply.
The president’s short field trip may have given his
campaign a nice picture of him “walking to the church with a coterie of aides
in his wake,” but it’s likely to be remembered as one of the most shameful
stunts of his entire presidency.
Protesters Would Save Him. He Was Wrong.
His gamble on creating a militarized culture
war has done the opposite of what he hoped for.
June 6,
2020
Rosa Pineda/Wikimedia
Commons
It seems almost inane to remark on an electoral horse
race at such a historic time. Why should we care about Donald Trump’s electoral
chances when energized citizens across America are braving injury and arrest to
confront white supremacy and police violence? But it’s important nonetheless.
That’s because while these problems have been centuries
in the making from slavery to Jim Crow to Ferguson and beyond, Donald Trump’s
particular failings as a person and a candidate are fanning the flames of the
crisis. Rather than help be a part of the solution, he is intentionally
exacerbating the tensions–not only because he himself is a racist whose
politics of authoritarian white grievance align with the same forces driving
police violence itself, but because he is desperate and in grave political
peril.
This isn’t news: he has been for some time. He has
consistently trailed all the leading Democratic contenders in national polling
since the beginning of the primary campaign—not just nationally, but also in
the swing states he needs in the electoral college. If he loses in November he
and his defenders will claim he was on a pathway to victory before external
forces derailed him, but this would be wrong. Even when the economy was strong,
which normally bodes very well for first-term presidents’ odds at winning
another four years, much of the persuadable public simply found itself so
exhausted by Trump’s ongoing campaign against public decency that they were
ready to vote for an alternative who did not take active measures to offend
people on a daily basis.
Matters worsened for him when COVID-19 hit the United
States and exposed him not just as a divisive buffoon, but a cynically
incompetent one. The Administration delayed its response, worried that any
action they took would hurt the stock market and erode Trump’s last remaining
electoral strength. But even as the job losses mounted into the tens of
millions as the nation rushed to try to contain an already widespread pandemic,
the President personally promoted miracle quack cures like hydroxychloroquine
and demonstrated his unbridled personal buffoonery by wondering aloud about the
possibility of drinking bleach and injecting sunlight as a method of curing
oneself of coronavirus.
Even before the brutal killing of George Floyd by
officers of the Minneapolis Police Department, Trump knew that he would need to
maximize his culture war appeal to non-college whites to make up ground lost to
the faltering economy. There can be little doubt that Trump saw opportunity in
the protests that followed to dust off the Nixon playbook , vowing to restore “law and order” in a country furious
that the law seemed to protect only some, while enforcing a brutal order on
others. If Trump’s actions threatened to turn the culture war into an active
shooting war, that would just be collateral damage on the road to his political
recovery.
The Trump orbit considers the iconography of jingoistic
militarism and the violent suppression of protest to be a political winner.
Consider, for instance, Rudy Giuliani’s bizarre 9/11 tribute tweet promoting a video that featured riot police, the
military, and high school football squaring off against young protesters
replete with counterculture stereotypes, including flag-burners, anti-police
sentiment and even men with long hair (how dare they.)
Trump, like Nixon before him, uses “law and order” as a
way of “talking about race without talking about race.” In this narrative, a
president who supports American “traditional culture” and stands strong against
people who agitate for racial justice will win over a “silent majority” of
people who just don’t want to be disturbed and want to have some peace and
quiet from their politics.
In this context, the killing of George Floyd was not a
crisis, but an opportunity.
A president with an ounce of self-respect, dignity and
compassion would have done her best to understand the anguish and grief facing
the black community as yet another black person was killed needlessly and with
zero remorse by a police force accustomed to no accountability. A president who
made a semblance of caring about the country as a whole would have made at
least a show of sympathy. Trump could not do even this.
This is, first and foremost, because Trump is the same
man who published a full-page ad recommending the execution of the innocent
Central Park 5, and has refused to apologize for or even retract his position.
He is the same man who, as president, implemented a policy of separating
immigrant children from their parents to lock them in cages without blankets or
toothpaste, as an explicit deterrent to other potential (nonwhite, of course)
immigrants seeking a better life. As Adam Serwer unforgettably said, the
cruelty is the point.
Trump enjoys and encourages state brutality against
people of color, and black people in particular. It excites him and his most
ardent followers. But his response isn’t just based on personal predilections.
It’s also based on political considerations. Trump sees shades of a 1968-style
law-and-order culture campaign that can carry him to re-election when literally
nothing else can.
Any normal president would have made an Oval Office
address to the nation as soon as major protests began. Trump, despite his
braggadoccio, showed characteristic cowardice and indecision for days, choosing
to post inflammatory tweets while hiding in a White House bunker. When he
finally did make a public address, it was little more the chest-puffing false
bravado of a petty tyrant.
He has encouraged governors to use extreme force against
protesters, using “antifa” and a small minority of looters and criminals as an
excuse. In a tweet that was flagged with a warning by Twitter for its
glorifcation of violence, he used a
phrase that harkened back to the segregation era to threaten lethal force
against protests. He has repeatedly threatened to use the military to suppress
dissent. He has rebuffed the calls of Mayor Muriel Bowser of the District
of Columbia to demilitarize the response to the protests, and has vowed to
replace the troops she refuses with forces beyond her control. He has turned
the District of Columbia, a plurality black city, into a militarized zone with
non-uniformed secret police, and the White House as a closed-off fortress
in its center.
Across the country, police have intentionally targeted
journalists, leaving many with disfiguring injuries. Can there be any
doubt that this unprecedented violence against the press was spurred on by
Trump’s endless war with any media that holds him accountable? Given that
Trump received the support of 84 percent of America’s police
officers, how could it be otherwise?
And most egregiously, in what will surely be viewed as
one of the most ill-advised stunts in presidential history, the Trump
Administration had federal security forces use tear gas and projectiles to
vacate Lafayette square by force of arms so Trump could make a show of walking
over to St. John’s Church and posing awkwardly with a bible held upside down.
The message that Trump wanted to send with this stunt is
not hard to decipher. It cast him as the warrior of white evangelical
Christianity, waging a holy crusade by force of arms against those who would
oppose it as the dominant force in American electoral politics.
Trump will fail, however, because neither the bastions of
white culture nor the nation’s security apparatus are on his side this time. No
matter what Trump did previously, the elements that represented these
conservative institutional bastions would not condemn him. But Trump’s effort
to use the military as both a political and kinetic weapon against Americans
exercising their constitutional rights has caused the people who should be his
allies to turn against him. It earned him stinging, humiliating rebukes from
respected military leaders such as four-star Marine Corps General and former
Secretary of Defense James Mattis. Conservative columnist George Will has
called for the removal of Trump and the Congressional leaders who enable him.
This despicable act even earned him condemnation from televangelist Pat
Robertson, one his bedrock supporters in the white Christian evangelical
movement.
Meanwhile, people of all races across America have
watched in horror as police continue to commit violent acts of brutality
against the people who are legally and peacefully protesting police brutality.
Statistically speaking, white people have historically not believed that
institutional racism in the police force is an issue worth their attention.
Now, for the first time, a majority of whites do, and Americans of all races
are overwhelmingly
supportive of the protests against
the killing of George Floyd. If Trump was planning on dividing Americans by
race and cleaving more whites to his side, the plan is backfiring. Trump even
seems to have a reverse Midas touch in recent polling on these issues: while
Americans were broadly supportive of using the military to quell the civil
disturbances at first, Trump’s embrace of the tactic seems to have helped drive those numbers into negative territory in
just a few days.
In one sense, he’s right: people are exhausted with
chaos, and they do want a respect for law and order. The problem for Trump? The
chaos is in large part of his own making, and insofar as it isn’t, he’s in the
way of solving the problems created by institutional racism and overlapping
hierarchies of oppression. The massive wave of police brutality has woken even
many previously disengaged white people up to the need for true equality under
the law, and an order in which everyone, including police and the president,
are held to account. And many of the same people Trump is trying to persuade
now believe that kicking him out of the White House is a necessary prerequisite
for making that vision a reality.
David Atkins is a writer, activist and research
professional living in Santa Barbara. He is a contributor to the Washington
Monthly's Political Animal and president of The Pollux Group, a qualitative
research firm.
Dante Atkins is a former Hill staffer and current
progressive communications consultant. Originally from Los Angeles, he resides
in Washington, DC
.
George Will: GOP Voters Will Forget Trump ‘Fairly Fast’ When He
Loses Election
3 Jun 2020 3,891
1:16
Wednesday on MSNBC, Washington Post columnist George
Will predicted President Donald Trump would lose in 2020, and that voters
will forget him “fairly fast.”
Host Joy Reid asked, “If Republican voters listen to you and say
it’s time to say no, let’s get rid of every single Republican in the Senate
that they are capable of voting out, what will happen to the Republican Party?
Do you foresee a time when Republicans develop amnesia about having been so
solicitous of Donald Trump? What happened to that party long term?”
Will said, “I’m fairly confident that Mr. Trump will be defeated
in the election. The next morning, a lot of Republicans will say, ‘Trump? I
don’t recognize the name.’ They’ll get over this fairly fast. Our parties are
very durable. Our two parties have formulated the political competition in this
country since the Republicans first ran a presidential ticket in 1856.”
When it is a matter of upholding the global interests of
A call to the working class! Stop Trump’s
coup d’état!
4 June 2020
The White House is now the
political nerve center of a conspiracy to establish a military dictatorship,
overthrow the Constitution, abolish democratic rights and violently suppress
the protests against police brutality that have swept across the United States.
The political crisis unleashed on
Monday night—when Donald Trump ordered military police to attack peaceful
protesters and threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 and deploy
federal troops to states to establish martial law—is rapidly escalating.
Democracy in America is teetering
on the
brink of collapse. Trump’s
attempt to carry out
a military coup is unfolding in
real time.
There is no other way to
interpret the sequence of events that have occurred over the past 24 hours. In
a series of extraordinary public statements, high-level political and military
figures leave no doubt they believe that Trump is seeking to establish a
military dictatorship.
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper
stated at a press conference that he opposed Trump’s threat to invoke the
Insurrection Act and deploy the military throughout the country. The use of
active duty soldiers to patrol US cities, Esper said, should be a “last resort
and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those
situations now.”
Trump, according to an official
who spoke to the New York Times, “was angered by Mr. Esper’s remarks, and
excoriated him later at the White House…” The White House press secretary,
Kayleigh McEnany, indicated that Esper may soon be dismissed from the
president’s cabinet.
Responding to Trump’s threats,
Esper has reversed himself and ordered 750 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne
currently in Washington DC not be sent back to Fort Bragg, as had previously
been announced.
Esper’s comments were followed by
an extraordinary denunciation of Trump by former Marine General James Mattis,
Trump’s first secretary of defense. We quote Mattis’ comments in some detail
not because we give any political support to “mad dog Mattis,” who played a
leading role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but because he provides a blunt
assessment from someone who is intimately familiar with what is happening
within the military.
Mattis accused Trump of
attempting to overthrow the Constitution. “When I joined the military, some 50
years ago,” he writes, “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.”
Mattis continued:
We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace”
that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” At home, we should
use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state
governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets
up a conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society. It
erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in
uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves
are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders
who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.
Mattis concluded his statement by
implicitly comparing Trump’s concept of the military to that of the Nazi
regime.
Admiral Sandy Winnefeld, a
retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in an email published
in the New York Times: “We are at the most dangerous time for civil-military
relations I’ve seen in my lifetime. It is especially important to reserve the
use of federal forces for only the most dire circumstances that actually
threaten the survival of the nation. Our senior-most military leaders need to
ensure their political chain of command understands these things.”
None of these military figures
are devoted adherents of democracy. Their statements are motivated by fear that
Trump’s actions will be met with massive popular opposition, with disastrous
political consequences.
“Senior Pentagon leaders,”
the Times reports, “are now so concerned about losing public
support—and that of their active duty and reserve personnel, 40 percent of whom
are people of color—that Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, released a message to top military commanders on Wednesday affirming
that every member of the armed forces swears an oath to defend the
Constitution, which, he said, ‘gives Americans the right to freedom of speech
and peaceful assembly.’”
Statements were also released by
all the living former presidents—Obama, Clinton, Bush and Carter. These
statements were far more circumspect and made no explicit warning of a coup.
They called for no specific action against Trump. It was far less an appeal to the
people than a cautious effort to dissuade military leaders from backing Trump.
On the side of the fascistic
cabal around Trump, the Times published a comment by Senator Tom
Cotton under the headline, “Send In the Troops.” This political conspirator
declared, “One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an
overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter
lawbreakers.” Since “delusional politicians” are refusing to do what is
necessary, Cotton writes, it is necessary for Trump to invoke “the Insurrection
Act [which] authorizes the president to employ the military ‘or any other
means’ in ‘cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws.’”
The political situation is on a
knife edge. Never in the history of the United States has the country been so
close to a military takeover. Threatening military deployments are still
underway. The Times reported on Wednesday night: “Despite calls for
calm from senior Pentagon leaders, the troops on the ground in Washington on Wednesday
night appeared to be ramping up for a more militarized show of force. National
Guard units pushed solidly ahead of the police near the White House, almost
becoming the public face of the security presence. They also blocked the
streets with Army transport trucks and extended the perimeter against
protesters.”
In the face of this unfolding
political conspiracy, the Democratic party is acting with its habitual mixture
of cowardice and complicity. Not a single major Democratic Party politician has
openly denounced the dictatorial actions of the Trump administration. They are
doing everything they can to keep the raging conflict within the state out of
public view. The line from top Democrats is that Trump’s “rhetoric” is
“unhelpful” and is serving to “inflame the situation.” Among the most pathetic
responses to the crisis is that of Senator Bernie Sanders, who merely retweeted
the statement of Mattis, to which he attached the comment: “Interesting
reading.”
During the long-forgotten
impeachment trial that was held in January, the Democrats insisted that it was
necessary to remove Trump immediately because he had allegedly withheld
military aid to the Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. They advocated the
removal of Trump because he was seen as insufficiently aggressive in his
relations with Russia.
But now, when Trump is attempting
to carry out a military coup and the overthrow of constitutional rule in the
United States, the Democrats offer no serious opposition to Trump, let alone
demand that he be removed from office. When it is a matter of upholding
the global interests of American imperialism, the Democratic leaders are full
of fire and brimstone. But when confronted with the direct threat of
dictatorship, they are meek as church mice.
Underlying their cowardice are
basic class interests. Whatever their tactical differences with Trump, the
Democrats represent the same class interests. What they fear more than anything
else is that opposition to Trump may assume revolutionary dimensions that
threaten the interests of the capitalist financial-corporate oligarchy.
The target of the conspiracy in
the White House is the working class. The corporate-financial oligarchy is
terrified that the eruption of mass demonstrations against police violence will
intersect with the immense social anger among workers over social inequality,
which has been enormously intensified as a result of the ruling class response
to the coronavirus pandemic and the homicidal back-to-work campaign.
Nothing could be more dangerous
than to think that the crisis has passed. It has, rather, just begun. The
working class must intervene in this unprecedented crisis as an independent
social and political force. It must oppose the conspiracy in the White House
through the methods of class struggle and socialist revolution.
The demonstrations that have
taken place during the past week rank among the most significant events in
American history. In every region and state, tens and hundreds of thousands of
working people and youth, in an extraordinary display of multi-racial and
multi-ethnic unity and solidarity, have taken to the streets to oppose the
institutionalized racism and brutality of the police. The South—the old bastion
of the Confederacy, Jim Crow laws and lynch mobs—has been the scene of some of
the largest of the demonstrations. The protesters are giving voice to the
deep-rooted democratic and egalitarian sentiments that are the noble heritage
of the great American Revolution of the eighteenth century and the Civil War of
the nineteenth century.
The only viable answer to the
criminal conspiracy being hatched in the White House is to raise the demand for
the removal of Trump, Pence and their conspirators from office.
This can be achieved only through
the intervention of the working class, which should join the protest
demonstrations en masse and initiate a nationwide political strike.
No to dictatorship!
Trump and Pence must go!
Democrats
cover for Trump’s coup d’état
3 June 2020
Following Trump’s announcement that he would deploy the military
to crush protests against police violence throughout the country, the Democrats
are working to cover up and downplay Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional coup
d’état.
Trump has operationalized his efforts to establish a
presidential dictatorship, based on the military and the police, through a
massive military deployment in Washington, D.C., which is under his direct
control. He is also escalating pressure on states to crack down on
demonstrations after his threat on Monday to send in the military if they do
not respond aggressively enough.
Late Tuesday night, Trump singled out New York City, writing on
Twitter that “New York’s Finest are not being allowed to perform their MAGIC
but regardless, and with the momentum that the Radical Left and others have
been allowed to build, they will need additional help”—that is, the deployment
of the military, under the president’s control.
President Donald Trump flanked by riot police in Lafayette Park
after it was cleared using tear gas for the president's Monday press event
outside St. John's Church across from the White House Monday, June 1, 2020. (AP
Photo/Patrick Semansky)
In innumerable public statements, Democratic members of
Congress, governors and mayors commenting on Trump’s actions ignored the
fascistic and authoritarian character of Trump’s actions, focusing instead on
declarations that Trump is not being “helpful” in controlling the
demonstrations.
“Let’s not overreact,” said Democratic Chicago Mayor Lori
Lightfoot, calling Trump’s statements “bluster.” Michigan Governor Gretchen
Whitmer, who was asked if she would request military intervention, replied that
this would only be necessary “because they’ve [the Trump administration] thrown
a lot more gas on a fire that was burning.”
In contrast to the heroism of the demonstrators, who showed up
by the tens of thousands in defiance of Trump’s threats, the Democrats have
responded with their typical display of fecklessness, cowardice and complicity.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden delivered a 30-minute
address on Tuesday full of mournful moralizing. He declared his wish that Trump
had read the Bible, as he “could have learned something” and criticized Trump
for fomenting “fear and division.”
Biden effectively equated the actions of protestors with the
actions of the fascistic president and the police rampage he has incited.
“There is no place for violence,” Biden said. “No place for looting or
destroying property or burning churches, or destroying businesses. … Nor is it
acceptable for our police, sworn to protect and serve all people, to escalate
tensions or resort to excessive violence.”
Biden avoided the central political issue—that the president is
engaging in illegal actions and seeking to overthrow the Constitution of the
United States.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles
Schumer issued a perfunctory four-paragraph statement on Trump’s Rose Garden
speech which did not include the word “military.”
“At a time when our country cries out for unification, this President
is ripping it apart,” they said. “We call upon the President, law enforcement
and all entrusted with responsibility to respect the dignity and rights of all
Americans.”
Mirroring Trump’s own photo-op in Washington following his
speech, Pelosi clutched a Bible before cameras while giving a two-minute
address Tuesday morning. “We would hope that the President of the United States
would follow the lead of so many presidents before him to be a healer-in-chief
and not a fanner of the flame,” Pelosi concluded.
Only six months ago, the impeachment campaign of the Democrats
concluded in the House of Representatives, which was presided over by Pelosi.
The House approved articles of impeachment against Trump for “high crimes and
misdemeanors” that centered on a phone call with the president of Ukraine and
allegations that Trump withheld military aid to the country in its war against
Russia. Trump was ultimately acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate.
While the Democrats considered the Ukraine call a basis for
removing the President, they pass over in silence the attempt to deploy the
military on US soil against domestic protests. Neither Pelosi nor any other
Democrat has called for a reconvening of the House and the introduction of a
new motion for Trump’s removal from office.
Trump’s demands that opposition to his government be “put down”
by deployment of active duty military personnel is blatantly illegal. As Yale
Law Professor Bruce Ackerman commented last year:
From the founding onward, the American constitutional tradition
has profoundly opposed the President’s use of the military to enforce domestic
law. A key provision, rooted in an 1878 statute and added to the law in 1956,
declares that whoever “willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force” to
execute a law domestically “shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not
more than two years”—except when “expressly authorized by the Constitution or
Act of Congress.”
As the WSWS has noted repeatedly, the aim of the Democrats in
their opposition to Trump over the past three-and-a-half years was to carry out
a palace
coup . From the beginning of his administration, the Democrats worked
to suppress and derail broad-based mass opposition to Trump’s fascistic
policies, channeling it behind their own reactionary, anti-Russia campaign.
Now when there is a mass popular movement against Trump, the
Democrats devote themselves to the futile effort at calming the situation. When
they criticize Trump for “fanning the flames,” they are expressing their fear
of a massive social eruption in the working class.
For the past three-and-a-half years, the Democrats have worked
with Trump on the essential elements of the domestic policy of the financial
oligarchy. Amidst the expanding coronavirus pandemic, they unanimously endorsed
the multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and are helping to enforce the
back-to-work campaign spearheaded by the Trump administration.
Absolutely nothing good will come from the Democratic Party. It
is a party of Wall Street and the military-intelligence agencies. It is
thoroughly hostile to the sentiments that are animating the massive and
expanding protests against police violence and the broader social anger among
workers that is behind them.
The struggle against the Trump regime can be taken forward only
through the independent political mobilization of the working class, in
opposition to the Democrats, Republicans and the entire political apparatus of
the corporate and financial elite. The fight against police violence and
Trump’s moves to presidential dictatorship must be fused with the struggle
against inequality, exploitation and the capitalist system.
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