circular tear gas firing squad https://t.co/HMaFBcBw2M
— kilgore trout, potato thief (@KT_So_It_Goes) June 3, 2020
At least the original French schlock-horror theatre intended to make its viewers throw up…
it's so weird how none of the administration's worst mistakes are ever trump's fault.
either there is constant lying about his involvement or he surrounds himself with incompetent people and does nothing to correct or lead them
I guess both could be true https://t.co/4fHa3K6NkW
— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) June 3, 2020
Dutiful (and comprehensive! there’s even video breakdowns!) theatrical review from the Squatter-in-Chief’s loyalest mainstream outlet. Even the NYTimes thinks his handlers should’ve done better:
After a weekend of protests that led all the way to his own front yard and forced him to briefly retreat to a bunker beneath the White House, President Trump arrived in the Oval Office on Monday agitated over the television images, annoyed that anyone would think he was hiding and eager for action.
He wanted to send the military into American cities, an idea that provoked a heated, voices-raised fight among his advisers. But by the end of the day, urged on by his daughter Ivanka Trump, he came up with a more personal way of demonstrating toughness — he would march across Lafayette Square to a church damaged by fire the night before.
The only problem: A plan developed earlier in the day to expand the security perimeter around the White House had not been carried out. When Attorney General William P. Barr strode out of the White House gates for a personal inspection early Monday evening, he discovered that protesters were still on the northern edge of the square. For the president to make it to St. John’s Church, they would have to be cleared out. Mr. Barr gave the order to disperse them.
What ensued was a burst of violence unlike any seen in the shadow of the White House in generations. As he prepared for his surprise march to the church, Mr. Trump first went before cameras in the Rose Garden to declare himself “your president of law and order” but also “an ally of all peaceful protesters,” even as peaceful protesters just a block away and clergy members on the church patio were routed by smoke and flash grenades and some form of chemical spray deployed by shield-bearing riot officers and mounted police.
After a day in which he berated “weak” governors and lectured them to “dominate” the demonstrators, the president emerged from the White House, followed by a phalanx of aides and Secret Service agents as he made his way to the church, where he posed stern-faced, holding up a Bible that his daughter pulled out of her $1,540 MaxMara bag…
Highlight mine. Wondering if Bill ‘Ever Lower’ Barr has been chosen as the Very Serious Media’s scapegoat for the past week’s endless debacles. It brings us no pleasure to point this out, Mr. Barr, but if you can’t handle The Talent to our standards, there will have to be contract discussions at your next management review...
Empty threats are classic dementia signs. Replies to my tweets urging ppl to not be intimidated say many ppl are scared. Don’t be. He threatens things he can’t do.
It’s now a “PR disaster.” -Ivanka, Kush & Hicks go down w/ him.
-Barr- indicted in ‘21.
-Milley & Esper- humiliated https://t.co/Ge1hmYEhJy— Tom Joseph (@TomJChicago) June 3, 2020
Reactionary demagogue makes rare public appearance at house of worship after violent rampage by his fanatics. Western observers are shocked at what they view as a garish display defiance against American desires to remove him. pic.twitter.com/jSCuXxl9E3
— Zeddy (@Zeddary) June 2, 2020
One reason the Arab Spring spread so far and wide is that what started as somewhat amorphous rage over injustice became revolutions as narcissist tyrants made themselves the face of the crackdown.
Trump, unlike most American Presidents, made himself the face of the crackdown.
— Zeddy (@Zeddary) June 3, 2020
Kayleigh McEnany compares Trump holding the Bible to other symbolic moments of resilience, listing Churchill surveying bombing damage in WWII, George W Bush after 9/11, Jimmy Carter in a sweater to encourage energy savings, George HW Bush signing ADA with disabled Americans.
— Matt Viser (@mviser) June 3, 2020
KellyAnne Conway may be evil (or at best amoral), but she’s not stupid. That’s why she skedaddled, to be replaced by a low-rent imitation…
— Darwin Brender a’ Brandis (@DTBbyTheSea) June 3, 2020
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Well, Ivanka does comes across as being openly contemptuous of Trump.
EDIT, got Trump’s wife mixed up with his daughter, honest mistake, they look the same.
SiubhanDuinne
I’m a little perplexed by this. Did KAC leave her job? Is she no longer at the WH? If so, I completely missed that news; if not, whither and from whom did she skedaddle?
NotMax
Kingtime for Twitler the antithesis of boffo.
Kay
It’s been a lousy year but watching this happen is a definite bright spot :)
Achrachno
@SiubhanDuinne: She just ducked out on this project. Maybe she saw trouble brewing? Anyway, I’m sure you’ll see her again in a few days delivering some fresh alternative facts.
HumboldtBlue
NSFW
An interview on the street got real. Really real.
My name is Big Dick Daddy and you won’t believe where he’s from.
cain
Our favorite person – David Brooks has a reaction he would like to share with all of us.
https://twitter.com/nytdavidbrooks/status/1268357524178325505
“I believe in democracy. I believe in a free press. I believe in open debate. I love it when my newspaper prints pieces I disagree with. It causes me to think.”
waspuppet
The reason Trump doesn’t think that’s a contradiction is because he sees the protesters in his front yard like conservatives see most people—as an undifferentiated mass. The people in the park Monday hadn’t done anything and weren’t doing anything, but because some people broke some windows Sunday night, Trump saw them as “violent thugs.” Because to Trump, like all conservatives, it isn’t what you do; it’s what you “just are.”
Mike in NC
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: All of Trump’s women are required to go under the knife.
Redshift
Always fun to turn on the local news and see the headline “Troops Moving Into the District.”
Troops from West Virginia are apparently arriving at Andrews Air Force Base south of DC. I didn’t catch if they’re National Guard or Army. (Gov. Northam politely declined the Orange Menace’s request for Virginia National Guard troops yesterday.)
Also on the local news was a report that the Little Green Men with no insignia who would only say they were with DOJ have now been identified as Bureau of Prisons. Which I guess is slightly better.
Achrachno
New story from AP “3 men plotted to terrorize Vegas protests”
You’ll be surprised to hear they’re neither Antifa nor even Black Bloc. Not left wing at all. Maybe our Atty.Gen. needs to look under a few different rocks. Has Barr figured out who the Minn. Umbrella Guy is?
BTW, these 3 have been arrested so all is well, until next time.
randy khan
@Kay:
Let’s only hope it continues.
Punchy
I’m sure I’m not the first to ask this…but why is the DOJ AG getting involved with riot control? Like….how did an admin lawyer become a LEO agent? WTF am I missing?
Kay
@Punchy:
Because he’s a ridiculous egomaniac who invented his own army and there are no grown ups in that place to rein him in?
sanjeevs
@Kay: If you look at the polls in the swing states, Trump is consistently several points ahead of the Repub candidate. The problem is the GOP, not Trump
danielx
@Redshift:
If “they” wanted guys who are capable of doing literally anything to anybody if ordered to do so, BoP tactical teams would be right up there on the list.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
There’s a reason for that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SiubhanDuinne:
She’s still there, she’s been out in the last couple days, pretending to be offended that anyone would question “the president’s” “faith”. And she missed that (to me) odd moment when he for some reason wouldn’t lie about it being his bible
Amir Khalid
That right there is comedy genius. Who writes Kayleigh’s material?
Kay
@sanjeevs:
Even better. Trump is ALSO a Republican! :)
gwangung
@Achrachno: There will be a next time…but apparently FBI agents have been well aware of these threats; they took this one down and are ready to take down others.
Which means Barr was lying out his ass about antifa involvement, but this is a day that ends with a “y”…..
Achrachno
@Achrachno: I should have noted these three are apparently Boogaloos trying the exploit disturbances.
Uncle Jeffy
A $1,540 MaxMara handbag? At least that Bible got a nice ride to church.
And by the way, KellyAnne – that wasn’t “his” bible- it was “a bible,” as he said.
danielx
@cain:
Not so I’d noticed.
Jinchi
@cain: I haven’t heard from David Brooks since he declared himself a nationalist
Raoul
The 17 Ring Shitshow is hard to keep track of. So, pardon me if I go off topic slightly. It sounds like strategically dismissed Inspector General Linnick had a few choice things to say behind closed doors. (nbc tweet)
Pompeo seems momentarily like a low-priority problem, relative to the civil uprising, but one thing Congresscritters are actually decent at is grinding along on the tracks they have laid. Go get ’em!
And of course while Trumpian chaos accelerates, our enemies abroad (and, heck, our ‘friends’) will continue to test us. Expect Mike to fail.
NotMax
@Uncle Jeffy
Not that it’s of importance but I tend to doubt she paid full retail.
Omnes Omnibus
@HumboldtBlue: I LOLed.
something fabulous
I thought it was creepy enough that Ivanka was the one holding the Bible in her purse (poor daddy! too heavy to carry it for all that long walk!)– but now it’s being floated that it was her idea to do the Church-opp, too?? She is a SHONDE FUR DIE GOYIM.
NotMax
@something fabulous
50 shades of goy.
:)
dmsilev
@cain:
…but then I go lie down for a while until the feeling passes. Time to write another column extolling my sense of humility.
Mike in NC
@something fabulous: Read that it was a joint decision by Ivanka and Hope Hicks, the one Fat Bastard wants to bang because Melania is unavailable.
Wag
@HumboldtBlue:
so
much winning in that clip. I’m exhausted from laughing so hard. Nicely done!
Raoul
@cain: No it doesn’t, David. You’re just a mimeograph machine.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Y’all saw Drew Brees said he can’t support kneeling during the anthem because it disrespects the flag his grandfathers fought to defend in World War II? Wendell Pierce did. I’d recommend reading to the end of the thread
something fabulous
@Mike in NC: Sure (and ugh)– but Hopey is not an in theory Orthodox Jewish person. Perhaps she should have been the one to carry the Bible in her fancy purse? There are just so many levels of grossness.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mike in NC:
I think he’s admitted to banging one, and said he wants to bang the other.
burnspbesq
@Kay:
it gets better: my local rag is reporting that latest Quinnipiac polling shows Texas up for grabs.
Mart
I was not paying attention but I sensed a join the Army ad fro m the music. Looking into deep space and pull away from a young person in a fucking Space Farce uniform, doing Space Farce things, waving the Space Farce flag. Just a paid by your military tax dollars advertisement for fucking Trump 2020. Mind is lost.
ETA Just thought about it, a Space X rocket was featured, maybe Musk paid for it.
Raoul
@Amir Khalid: I’ll give her this: She may be the first Republican press secretary to every say anything positive (at least I think it was meant positively? Who can tell with her) about Jimmy Carter, cardigans, or energy efficiency.
Jager
@Uncle Jeffy:
It was a “Prosperity Gospel”
cain
@Jinchi:
He has returned.. like a mosquito during a picnic.
charluckles
Got the email from my children’s school district today. Massive budget cuts. The layoffs coming down the pipeline are going to be devastating. So on the bad side, this is likely to be one of the worst years in our nation’s history, but on the good side Trump is going to get absolutely crushed and we can start to rebuild.
Kent
WANT’S TO?
I assume that was one of her job duties and why she was called back. It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
cain
@dmsilev:
“He lies down in a comforting cocoon of bile until the feeling passes.”
Fixed that for you.
patrick II
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I was waiting for that response from someone. Much disrespect was shown, not to the flag that flew in that war, but the black Veterans who risked their lives to win it.
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
Can’t be NotMax, he’s loads funnier (and smarter) than McInane-y
patrick II
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I hope and expect to see some pre-game kneeling this NFL season.
SFAW
@cain:
“I’m a good little doggie” Brooks reminds me of Michael Palin at around the 10:45 mark. Effing moron.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes and I find that cloned Barbie look so uncanny valley creepy.
trollhattan
The answer, as always, is that a third was not available.
SFAW
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Just goes to show you that one can be a great QB AND a moron, all at the same time.
trollhattan
@burnspbesq:
Too lazy to look, was Humphrey the last Democrat Texas voted for?
something fabulous
@NotMax: I’ll allow it :)
mrmoshpotato
@HumboldtBlue: Oh good lord!
???
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@mrmoshpotato: Oh you miss the point, if even Prince Charming there knows this shit is bad, this shit is bad.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Bunk! Don’t mess with Bunk/Wendell.
columbusqueen
@Kent: You are assuming that Fat Bastard hasn’t actually committed incest, which is not an assumption I’m willing to make.
columbusqueen
@trollhattan: Wendell Pierce is the man!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@columbusqueen: Me either.
Omnes Omnibus
@columbusqueen: There are thoughts I prefer not to think.
trollhattan
@columbusqueen:
Yup. So many great roles. And, he can play that ‘bone, learned it for his “Treme” part.
JWR
Speaking of the feared criminal organization that is Antifa…
Gess thay dont got good skools in arizoni. (But I’m almost certain they have the best Hate Radio around.)
Amir Khalid
Is Antifa a real thing, or is it merely a figment of some seriously febrile right-wing imaginations?
JeffH
@trollhattan: Carter won Texas in 1976. That election had a really weird map.
trollhattan
@JeffH:
Thanks, would have NEVER guessed that one. Ford, I suppose, was as unTexas as they come.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@JeffH: It was the last election before all of the south went Republican.
HumboldtBlue
Malcolm Jenkins un a football player and he just ended a career.
Raoul
@Amir Khalid: This may be a bit of a stretch, but Antifa is a thing like Hippies was a thing in the late 60s.
They exist, groups of them know each other, party together, have sex with each other (and outside the thing that isn’t a group but isn’t quite a movement, either). And the establishment hates them. But they aren’t organized, in the sense that people think of institutions. They’re not like Hell’s Angels of the late 60s, or the Black Panthers back then even.
Neither Hippies nor Antifa are, broadly speaking, dangerous. Though in odd ways both have a certain earnestness. And Antifa is probably more solidly left wing and certainly less hedonistic.
Jay
James E Powell
@trollhattan:
Texas went for Carter in 1976.
JWR
@Amir Khalid: “Is Antifa a real thing”
Well, to hear Billy ray Barr tell it, I expect them to be slammed with a RICO suit any day now. //
;)
HumboldtBlue
@Jay:
Damn.
Jay
@Raoul:
LMFAO,
Antifa are a broad base of interconnected Community members working to build resiliant communities, through various organized groups from food banks, public health clinics, tenants support groups, immigrant support groups to churches.
When Nazis show up, ususally “from away” to terrorize their communities with marches and actions, they unite to protect their communities and drive the Nazis out, no matter how much the Cops help the Nazis out.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@trollhattan: southerners voting for fellow southern evangelical against Northern Yalie.
You know George w. Bush ran for congress in 1978 in Texas and lost because, at the time, he wasn’t an evangelical.
James E Powell
@Amir Khalid:
I’ve been asking this question for days now and no one can really give me an answer. I wonder whether it is a name people give themselves rather than an organization. And how many people claim the name?
smike
@Raoul:
That puts it about right, IMO. Anti-fascism doesn’t seem like a confusing concept and would seemingly be a big fucking tent. Hell, I can’t even remember what the secret handshake is or remember what the antifa flag looks like. And if I can find it, I hope my membership card is still good. I haven’t paid dues in ages.
Jay
@HumboldtBlue:
Yurp
Jay
@James E Powell:
yup, like “I will bear witness” it is a personal declaration and a willingness to show up up, not an Organization.
Jay
@smike:
red flag, white circle, either a yellow or black circle outline with three arrows, pointed downwards, either left or right.
JWR
@Raoul:
Stop right there. They have sex with each other?
Where do I sign up? ;)
eddie blake
@Amir Khalid:
antifascists have been around as long as fascist have.
mrmoshpotato
OT – what say you late-night cheese fries?
Anne Laurie
As someone said, it’s as real as Red Sox Nation (but, as a Boston-area person, I feel impelled to add ‘somewhat less dangerous’). There’s a loose set of ‘antifa theories’ published all over the less public forms of social media, and some number of mostly-young, mostly-male, probably mostly-white ‘activists’ who hope to turn that theory into action.
There’s a few places where actual antifa activists have been sighted in the flesh — they’re a fixture at political protests on the West Coast, and also showed up commendably during the Charlottesville white-supremacy riot by Trump’s ‘very fine people’.
My personal estimate is that there are far fewer actual ‘actifa members’ than there are boogymonster ANTIFA!!! ghost stories being swapped on the Wingnut Wurlitzer. I mean, there’s at least one actual Red Sox Nation / police death I know about — if there were an equivalent victim of antifa-security forces, I think Fox News and the Oval Office Squatter would’ve told us about it.
Jay
Geminid
@Amir Khalid: antifa is a real movement, but it has been hyped by right wing media into a vast, dangerous threat. I have a friend who really worries about them. He is very gullible.
Jay
@Anne Laurie:
there are over 50 “antifa” “Organizations” in YVR. 98% of the time, we spend our time working on other things, like DERA, or the group I work with, that provides medical services and mental care services to the unhoused.
We all come together to support each other when the Nazi’s try to take over our streets and endanger our communities.
We all share some common social justice beliefs, so we back each other up on a large number of issues, protests, displays, actions and outreach. From guarding Mosques and Synagogues, to preventing evictions.
Jay
trollhattan
@Jay:
He had a hammer. “Mistaken for a gun.”
Folks, go naked or go home. Don’t even carry a mop.
Jay
Jay
@trollhattan:
ah, the old imaginary weapon justification,…….
Jay
Jay
Jay
Jay
Yutsano
Annnd to the surprise of absolutely no one…Rand Paul continues to be a knuclefuck.
JWR
There was an incident last night in Hollywood or thereabouts, where a cop SUV drives up and begins firing pepper balls, (and maybe rubber-coated bullets), at a group of friends walking home from an earlier protest.
And Just now on local news, L.A. County Sheriff Alex villanueva says that, “Well, we don’t know what happened leading up to this incident” and yada yada ya, just like after every other act of brutality carried out by his
shock troopsofficers. And I actually voted for this creep.ETA, Cops didn’t even get out of their car. They were Just shooting out the window.
Bruce K
If there was any doubt the whole world is watching, last night in Athens (Greece, not Georgia) I stumbled into a protest marching up past my block, in the direction of the United States Embassy which is two blocks east of me. I wondered if it might be for George Floyd, but thought that might be chauvinistic of me, to assume that a protest in Athens was about a case of police brutality in the United States.
They were protesting the killing of George Floyd.
Jay
Jay
@JWR:
cops always side with cops. They could care less about their communities or their oaths, it’s all about having life or death powers and the pension.
Jay
Feathers
@Amir Khalid: @Raoul: I have the feeling someone googled iconic presidential photos and the Carter one came up. Not having any idea who he was, they included him.
JWR
@Jay:
My initial doubts about Villanueva came shortly after the election, when he reinstated one of his pals who’d been fired for domestic abuse. “Here we go again” was all I could think.
Poe Larity
I’m waiting for Bunkerfuhrer to start wearing a uniform. What would the 5-star Space Force uniform look like?
mrmoshpotato
A steaming pile of shit?
JWR
@Jay: The streets of Capitol Hill are all lined with water bottles.
So now they’re hiding their “chemical projectiles” right out in the open, eh? Just like their hidden (no doubt by some sort of police) pallets of bricks. Busted!
BTW, did everyone hear what LAPD chief Michael Moore said about protesters the other day? If not, it was a doozy!:
He tried walking it back within minutes, but the damage was done. ETA Edited for clarity, I hope.
lgerard
@mrmoshpotato:
It night look something like the picture at the top of this article
Fat Icarus!
Frankensteinbeck
@James E Powell:
It is a name people give themselves, yes. That means it includes everything from people who go “of course I’m anti-fascist” to the folks who punch Nazis in the street to small organizations like Jay mentions to violent anarchists who are certainly in the mix of lunatic assholes spreading violence during these protests.
Disclaimer: Most of the lunatic assholes spreading violence are uniformed police.
@Poe Larity:
They all have round white helmets.
Ken
Not that he ever has been. But later he figured out what signals to send to trick them into thinking he was one.
Shows how far evangelicals have declined since, that even Trump’s feeble efforts have them convinced he’s one of them – if not the promised Second Coming.
Ken
Objection. Fuhrer means leader, and there’s no leadership on display.
artem1s
Why? Why is this President and his entourage terrified to walk a block out of the front door of the WH? Even if there were no protests going on, even if it this photo-op had happened a month ago for ‘rona, I’m getting the feeling here that Barr would have felt compelled to rough up every day tourists just because Mien Fuhrer is afraid of his own people.
Gentlemen! You can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!
artem1s
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
He also lost because he hadn’t aligned himself with Rumsfeld and Cheney’s gang of thugs and adopted the Southern Strategy. Bush I was a thoroughly unlikable person who knew how to use people to clime his way to the top. He hitched his way to the WH on Raygun’s hairdo, the Christian Right, and used his time at the CIA to keep the Bush Crime family in power and money. Think JEB only meaner and sneakier. W may have been Barb’s favorite, but he got his cruelty and dumb cunning from Poppy.
jonas
@JWR: I’ve been really dismayed by the whole Villaneuva saga. He came into the job — supported by a lot of progressive community groups — promising to reform a notoriously corrupt LEA, and then turned around and brazenly undid a bunch of anti-corruption measures and began reinstating cops who had been suspended or fired for various abuses. It was unbelievable.
Bill Arnold
@Jay:
Let’s see how this works; the basic argument is that it’s OK to violate the constitutional rights of Americans to eliminate the possibility of one or more future crimes.
So, for instance, it’s OK to confiscate everybody’s guns in violation of the (current dominant interpretation of) the Second Amendment, because they might be used to kill people.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
As many others have said, it exists, is a real thing, but is a completely informal disorganiztion.
I saw a great GIF just the other day, guy wearing a formal Nazi armband, scarlet with swastika, approaches another guy, who instantly punches the Nazi HARD right in the face. Nazi falls away to the ground, folks restrain the antifa guy from stepping forward to continue his assault on the Nazi. Short sweet film clip. That’s Antifa~!!~ Spontaneous revulsion towards Nazis!
Was proud of the gentleman for standing up for American values by smacking the crap out of that slimy Nazi prick!! I just wish I wasn’t too old to go out Nazi hunting. Who could have imagined that would be necessary in America in 2020???
J R in WV
@Ken:
In order to become an evangelical, you first have to be really easily misled and confused. Prosperity Gospel … Gawd wants you to be rich, also, too!!
Then convincing the evangelicals that Trump is one of them is easy, a piece of cake!