Washington (AFP) – President Donald Trump on Wednesday denied media reports that he was rushed for his safety to the White House bunker while protests raged in the streets outside.
“It was a false report,” Trump told Fox News radio, before elaborating that he did go into the secure area but only for a “tiny, little, short period time.”
According to The New York Times, quoting an unidentified source described as having direct knowledge, Secret Service bodyguards took Trump into the bunker on Friday night.
Outside in Lafayette Square, crowds of people protesting police brutality fought running battles with officers and set fires.
According to Fox News, Trump was taken to the bunker on Sunday.
Trump said he’d gone down but only during the day, not the night, as reported, and that he was partly doing so to carry out an “inspection.”
“You go there, some day you may need it. You go there, I went down. I looked at it. It was during the day. It was not a problem,” he said.
“I read about it, like a big thing. There was never a problem, we never had a problem, nobody ever came close to giving us a problem. The Secret Service does an unbelievable job of maintaining control of the White House,” he said.
Reports of Trump taking shelter sparked a wave of online mockery, which is believed to have contributed to his decision on Monday to make a controversial walk across Lafayette Park to visit the partly damaged church of St. John’s.
Police violently dispersed mostly peaceful crowds of protesters to clear a path for Trump. To cap his show of strength, he stood outside the church for pictures of him holding up a Bible.
Fines Trump $2 Million for Diverting Money From Veterans Fundraiser to His Campaign
An honest businessman. Photo: Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images
Ajudge ordered President Trump to pay $2 million to a group of charities on Thursday, ruling that the president had broken the law by directing the proceeds from an event advertised as benefiting veterans to his presidential campaign instead.
The lawsuit stems from the wild days of the 2016 Republican primary. Because of a feud he maintained with Fox News at the time, Trump decided to skip a debate hosted by the network just before the Iowa caucuses in January 2016, and hold his own, competing event instead — a televised fundraiser for veterans. Shockingly enough, it turned out the event wasn’t quite on the level. Rather than having the foundation run the event and direct all proceeds to the charities, as promised, Trump did something quite different. As New York State Supreme Court Justice Saliann Scarpulla put it in her decision on Thursday:
Mr. Trump’s fiduciary duty breaches included allowing his campaign to orchestrate the Fundraiser, allowing his campaign, instead of the Foundation, to direct distribution of the Funds, and using the Fundraiser and distribution of the Funds to further Mr. Trump’s political campaign.
The lawsuit was brought by New York State attorney general Barbara Underwood, who announced last year that the Trump Organization would shut down amid her investigations into its well-documented chicanery. Though Trump had said on Twitter that he would fight the fundraiser case, his lawyers and the state have been in talks for months to negotiate a settlement.
It’s a loss for Trump, but $2 million is a minor blow in his universe — and the judge could have been harsher. She decided not to impose any punitive damages on the president, nor impose lifetime bans on him and his children from serving on the boards of New York–based charities in the future, conditions the state had been seeking. (Though she did put into place other restrictions involving his future charitable endeavors.)
Trump suffered another legal setback on Monday, when a federal appeals court ordered him to produce eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns, in a case likely headed for the Supreme Court.
THERE'S NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE DEMS AND GOP. THEY SERVE THE SAME PAYMASTERS.
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.
Awash in Wall Street Cash
Joe Biden’s Campaign Is
Awash in Wall Street Cash
2 Jun 202080
4:01
Joe Biden has adopted the anti-Wall Street rhetoric of some of his former rivals for the Democrat nomination, but that has not stopped him from collecting an enormous war chest of campaign cash from the financial sector.
Biden on Tuesday said that America “wasn’t built by Wall Street bankers and CEOs, it was built by the great American middle class.”
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Biden: “The president held up the Bible at St. John’s church yesterday. I just wish he opened it once in a while.”
Biden: “If it weren’t clear before, it’s clear now: This country wasn’t built by Wall Street bankers and CEOs, it was built by the great American middle class.”
Securities industry employees, a close proxy for Wall Street, have donated $29,703,244 to Biden’s campaign or to political committees supporting his campaign for the presidency, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The sector is the second-largest source of campaign contributions to Biden’s campaign, coming only after Democrat Party and left-wing organizations.
Donald Trump, by contrast, has only received around $6,320,861.
Biden has also received far more campaign cash from employees of J.P.Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs than his Republican rival, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. For example, Biden has taken more than 6 times as much money from J.P. Morgan Chase employees than Trump.
Employees at those four firms have donated a total of $508,259 to Biden’s campaign, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Morgan Stanley was the biggest contributor to Biden of the group, with donations totaling $171,274.
Trump has received just $27,981 dollars from Morgan Stanley employees. J.P. Morgan employees have contributed $23,942. Bank of America employees given $40,448. Goldman’s contributions add up to a grand total of $4,211, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. A total of $96,582, less than one-fifth of Biden’s take.
Political contributions from Citigroup were unavailable at the time of publication.
The campaign cash from the big Wall Street banks have poured into Democrat coffers in the 2020 election cycle. Slightly more than 58 percent of Goldman’s contributions to Congressional candidates have gone to Democrats. More than 62 percent of Morgan Stanley’s contributions went to Democrats. Bank of America was nearly even, with 49.9 percent going to Republicans and 49.6 percent going to Republicans. J.P. Morgan favored Democrats by nearly 60 percent to 30 percent, with 10 percent going to independent candidates.
This is not a function of just giving to the majority party. Goldman’s contributions favor Democrats in the House and Republicans in the Senate, while Morgan Stanley’s and J.P. Morgan’s favor Democrats in both. Bank of America contributors favor Republican candidates for the House and Democrats in the Senate.
When measured by contributions to all federal candidates, all four skew Democrat. J.P. Morgan’s contributions are the most tilted, with 73.4 percent going to Democrat candidates, and Bank of America’s the least, with 58.5 percent going to Democrats. Morgan Stanley tilts 67.9 percent Democrat. Goldman lean is 61.28 Democrat.
This is a further shift leftward by Wall Street from the last election cycle, when between 50 percent and 52 percent of the contributions through mid-year 2017 from J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America went to Republicans. Those banks sent between 37 percent and 45 percent of the contributions to Democrats.
I was just INSPECTING the bunker under the White House when I went there 'two and a half' or three times during protests claims Donald Trump
- Trump said he went down to the White House bunker during the protests in Washington D.C. to inspect it
- President denied he was taken into secure shelter out of safety concerns
- 'I've gone down two or three times - all for inspection,' he told Brian Kilmeade
- Trump reportedly spent an hour Friday night in the underground bunker as protesters gathered outside of the White House
- Trump was said to be furious at the image of him in the underground bolt hole, which was designed for use in emergencies like a terrorist attack
- 'I was there for a tiny, short little period of time,' he said
President Donald Trump said he went down to the White House bunker during the protests in Washington D.C. to inspect it and not because of any possible threat.
He denied a report he was taken into the secure shelter by Secret Service agents on Friday night out of concerns for his safety.
'I go down, I've gone down two or three times - all for inspection - and you go there, some day you may need it,' he said Wednesday on Brian Kilmeade's FOX News Radio show. 'I went down. I looked at it. It was during the day, it was not a problem.'
The president reportedly spent an hour there Friday night as hundreds of protesters gathered outside the White House, some of them throwing rocks and tugging at police barricades.
President Donald Trump said he went down to the White House bunker during the protests in Washington D.C. to inspect it and not out of safety concerns
President Trump was said to be furious of images of himself in the bunker and his walk out of the White House Monday to visit St. John's Church was a response to that
Trump was said to be furious at the image of himself in the underground bolt hole, which was designed for use in emergencies like a terrorist attack. His tough crack down on protesters and march to St. John's Church across from the White House on Monday - where police used gas and rubber bullets to clear peaceful demonstrators from the area to make way for the president - was, in part, a response to the bunker reports.
He described his time in the underground room as 'more for an inspection.'
'I was there for a tiny, short little period of time,' he told Kilmeade in a 30 minute interview on Wednesday morning. 'A whole group of people went with me as an inspecting factor.'
'They said it would be a good time to go down and take a look because maybe sometime you're going to need it,' he noted. 'I've been down - that'd be number two, so two and half sort of, because I've done different things, but two and a half.'
'But I looked I was down for a very very short period of time, a very very short period of time, I can't tell you who went with me but a whole group of people went with me,' Trump added.
The president has defended his short walk across Lafayette Park to visit the historic church, where every president since James Madison has prayed. Religious leaders, Democratic officials and even a few Republicans questioned the level of force used to remove peaceful protesters so the president could have his photo taken in front of St. John's while holding a bible.
Trump said religious leaders loved what he did, specifically citing Franklin Graham.
'Most religious leaders loved it,' he told Kilmeade. 'Church leaders loved that I went there with a Bible.'
Graham, the son of the late Rev. Billy Graham, praised President Trump for visiting the historic church.
'President Donald J. Trump made a statement by walking through Lafayette Park to St. John's Episcopal Church that had been vandalized and partially burned Sunday night. He surprised those following him by holding up a Bible in front of the church,' Graham wrote in a Facebook post. 'Thank you President Trump. God and His Word are the only hope for our nation.'
But many church leaders criticized the president for going to stand in front of the church to have his photo taken. He did not read from the bible he carried or inspect damage to the church's basement.
'I would have been able to go inside if I wanted to but it was boarded up,' he told FOX News Radio.
Pat Robertson, the televangelist who founded the Christian Broadcasting Network, also condemned the president's actions on his show 'The 700 Club' on Wednesday.
'You just don't do that, Mr. President. It isn't cool!" he said.
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington criticized Trump's photo-op.
'He took the symbols sacred to our tradition and stood in front of a house of prayer in full expectation that would be a celebratory moment,' she said.
President Trump claimed religious leaders approved of his photo-op in front of St. John's, holding a bible, but many of them publicly criticized the president
The president also falsely claimed St. John's burned down. The church's basement was damaged in a fire over the weekend as protests took place in Washington D.C. in the wake of the death of George Floyd. Trump stood in front of the boarded up church to have his photo taken.
'They burned down the church the day before,' he said. 'They burned down a big section of it. Fortunately, they were able to catch it in time.'
President Trump struggled in his response to the protests that broke out throughout the country and particularly on how to deal with the one in his own backyard.
He continues to push he is doing well with African American voters and that the use of force is the best counter to the demonstrations.
'As a Republican I'm doing very well with African Americans,' he said in the Kilmeade interview.
And he pushed that strong image - calling himself the 'law and order' president in his Rose Garden address Monday - partially to counter the image of him being placed in the underground bunker as protests took place outside the White House's front gate.
Officially known as the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, the bunker was built in the early 1940s by then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
At the time, the United States was involved in World War Two.
FDR's successor, Harry Truman, expanded the PEOC as part of a massive renovation of the White House complex that included a complete demolition and expansion of the structures.
It was rarely – if ever – used by subsequent administrations until the events of September 11, 2001, forced senior officials of the George W. Bush administration into the area for fear that a hijacked airplane was headed for the White House.
Bush was not in Washington, DC, on the day of the attack.
The PEOC was first built during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the early 1940s. At the time, the United States was involved in World War Two
The bunker was used by then-Vice President Dick Cheney, then-First Lady Laura Bush, and then-Second Lady Lynne Cheney on September 11, 2001
In the late 1940s, when Harry Truman was president, the White House underwent a massive renovation that included large-scale demolitions and an overhaul of the complex. The above image shows the ground floor of the White House as it was being demolished in April 1950
The PEOC was expanded as part of the renovation, though photos of the complex are not available. The above images shows the demolition of the ground floor of the White House in April 1950
But Vice President Dick Cheney, first lady Laura Bush, and other senior aides were quickly whisked to the area that morning.
In her 2010 memoir Spoken from the Heart, Laura Bush recalled the experience of being rushed into the bunker.
'I was hustled inside and downstairs through a pair of big steel doors that closed behind me with a loud hiss, forming an airtight seal,' she wrote.
'I was now in one of the unfinished subterranean hallways underneath the White House, heading for the PEOC, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, built for President Franklin Roosevelt during World War II.'
In the tense days following the attacks, she and President Bush were awaken in the middle of the night by their Secret Services agents and taken to the bunker. But that threat turned out to be benign.
After September 11, Bush administration officials came to the conclusion that the PEOC was not sufficient to allow the president and his aides to function efficiently during an emergency.
So the White House began a massive project to build another, larger bunker believed to go five stories deep under the North Lawn.
'After that attack, the national security people recognized that that just is not going to cut it,' author Ronald Kessler, who wrote a book in 2018 about the Trump White House, told The Washington Post.
'That's just not sufficient.'
Trump, however, was believed to have been taken to the original bunker and not the new, five-story one.
In 2010, massive construction was done near the West Wing of the White House
The official explanation given was that existing infrastructure was being replaced, but reports indicate that $375million was spent building a five-story underground bunker below the North Lawn that can sustain the fallout from a nuclear attack
In 2010, the General Services Administration undertook a massive construction project just outside of the West Wing.
The official explanation given by the GSA when reporters asked about the purpose of the construction was that it was done to replace existing infrastructure at the White House.
The construction project – officially a long overdue upgrade of White House utilities – began in September 2010 with the excavation of a huge, multistory pit in front of the West Wing, wrapping around to include West Executive Avenue, the street that separates the White House from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
A tall, green construction fence sprang up that blocked America's most famous office complex from public view.
The GSA went to great lengths to keep the work secret, not only putting up the fence around the excavation site but ordering subcontractors not to talk to anyone and to tape over company info on trucks pulling into the White House gates.
'What it consists of is five stories deep into the ground with its own air supply and food supply,' Kessler said, noting that few details are known. 'It is sealed off from the aboveground area so that if there were, for example, a nuclear attack, the radiation would not penetrate into this bunker, which has very thick concrete walls and that sort of thing.'
It cost more than $376 million to build.
Shortly after Trump's arrival at the White House, he and a select few of his aides were given a tour of the facility.
If the president ever needed to flee the White House, he could go through at least two tunnels. One of them leads to the Treasury Building and an unmarked entrance on H Street.
The other tunnel leads to the South Lawn, where the president can quickly board Marine One.
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