Fake News: (1) The Park Protestors Were Peaceful; (2) They Were Teargassed
Yesterday, I posted an article on why I think Trump's walk across the street to the church was a good political move. You can read it here: https://www.garynorth.com/public/20940.cfm.
But what about the tear gassing? How could I ignore that? Mainly because it never happened. The reports to the contrary are a pack of lies.
I gather that this has been a successful pack of lies. Maybe you were sucked in, too. Maybe you were in some way bothered by the fact that Trump ordered the tear gassing of peaceful protesters.
There was no tear gassing. The protesters were violent.
Let's get a few things straight.
The first thing to get straight is that Washington, DC is a federal jurisdiction. Second, public parks in Washington are open to the general public for only as long as there is no threat to the safety of people in the park or nearby the park. The park authorities can clear the park at any time. This is a matter of law.
This is from the conservative news site, The Federalist (June 2).
Every single major media outlet falsely reported that Park Police were unprovoked when they used “tear gas” to clear the area. If any of that were true, it might mark the first time in history that cops without gas masks launched tear gas in an area that the president of the United States easily walked through minutes later.After thousands of false tweets, print stories, and broadcast stories to the contrary, local journalist Neal Augenstein of WTOP reported that a Park Police source said “tear gas was never used — instead smoke canisters were deployed, which don’t have an uncomfortable irritant in them.” Further, the source said the crowd was dispersed because of projectiles being thrown by the “peaceful protesters” at the Park Police and because “peaceful protesters” had climbed on top of a structure in Lafayette Park that had been burned the prior night. . . .
Prior to getting the actual facts, nearly every major media outlet falsely reported that canisters of tear gas, not smoke canisters, were used against peaceful protesters. The false story spread internationally despite its lack of evidence. Here are just a few of the uncountable examples.
To see a list of these fake articles with links to the originals, click through to the article.
Were you taken in? If so, you are a victim.
This is a park across the street from the White House. This is always a highly sensitive geographical area for protesters to come to throw rocks at passersby or anyone else.
When the President of the United States crosses the street on foot, which virtually no President ever does, and he is surrounded by Secret Service agents, he has the right to order the clearing of any public property that is close to the White House. There's no question about this. That is basic to protecting the life of the President of the United States.
He took his walk 15 minutes before the 7 PM curfew. That park should have been cleared an hour earlier. There was no way that the hooligans in the park who were masquerading as peaceful protesters for media consumption should have been in that park.
The Attorney General of the United States had ordered that park cleared the day before: Sunday. He had the right to do this.
Here are the specifics. This information is provided by the local news department of WTOP radio. The story is here.
Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House, has been the local epicenter of the last five days of protests in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police custody last week.The statue-dotted green space, just north of the White House, is usually filled with residents and tourists taking a break from work or from a long day of visiting monuments.
But on the evening of June 1, just as President Donald Trump was making a speech about authorities asserting themselves in the face of the Floyd-inspired protests around the country, a combination of shield-wielding police from federal agencies (Secret Service, Park Police, DC National Guard) and nearby Arlington, Virginia, began to push the assembled crowd back past the north side of the square, toward H Street NW and beyond.
The police action came about 15 minutes before the 7 p.m. curfew that D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser had announced earlier Monday.
Both Bowser, D.C. police Chief Peter Newsham and the District’s Attorney General Karl Racine have criticized the action as premature and unwarranted, just a quarter of an hour before the curfew was to commence.
Racine’s Tuesday statement called it “an assault” on peaceful protesters. Bowser called it unprovoked and “shameful.”
The question is this: Were the park's authorities informed that the park had to be cleared prior to the curfew? Here are other questions listed by WTOP.
Who gave the order to push protesters away from Lafayette Square, and when was the order made?Did police make any effort to warn protesters that they should move back?
Were the police provoked by the protesters?
Was tear gas or another irritant used to break up the crowd of protesters?
These are legitimate questions. But what is not a legitimate question is whether or not the president of the United States or his Atty. Gen. had the right to clear the park. For questions regarding the safety of the president, he did. He surely did in Washington, DC. When presidents come to town, all kinds of property are roped off. Everybody knows this. Nobody wants to go through another Kennedy assassination. The American people have accepted this ever since January 22, 1963. This is part of the American political tradition.
WTOP reports that a number of reports say that Atty. Gen. William Barr made the request either on Sunday or Monday morning. CBS News reported that Barr and the office did make this decision either late Sunday night or early Monday morning. When Barr visited the park on Monday afternoon, he found that it had not been cleared.
At that point, after talking with police, the move to expand the perimeter started. A Department of Justice official, who spoke with The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity, said “he [Barr] basically said: ‘This needs to be done. Get it done.'”However, in a statement late Tuesday from the U.S. Park Police Acting Chief Gregory T. Monahan, there was no mention of this conference with Barr. Instead, the Park Police characterized protesters close to the park as being violent and throwing objects such as frozen water bottles and “caustic liquids,” which is what prompted three warnings to move back and an eventual push on the crowd.
That was on the afternoon of Trump's walk across the street.
The park should have been cleared by 6:45 PM. It should have been cleared by 4 PM.
According to a CBS News Justice Department source, Barr and his department made the decision to move the crowd back from the square regardless of Trump’s plan to walk to the church for photos.
So, it's the old question repeated endlessly by Sen. Howard Baker during the Watergate hearings: "What did they know and when did they know it?"
Adding more detail to the events in the park Tuesday was Arlington County, which sent a release discussing its decision to recall officers it had detailed to D.C. to support the National Park Police. The county memo reinforced the assertion that “demonstrators were ordered to leave the area” about 10 minutes before the “redirection” began.D.C. police Chief Newsham, in his discussion of Monday’s incident during a Tuesday news conference, also noted that “federal law enforcement officers” gave warnings to disperse.
Then there were the reports about the teargas. What was that all about?
A reporter for WTOP was given this response by Acting United States Park Police Chief Gregory T. Monhan. They did use smoke canisters and pepper balls. He insisted that "No tear gas was used by USPP officers or other assisting law enforcement partners to close the area at Lafayette Park."
How about the media story that they were peaceful?
Deeper reporting reveals that protesters did begin to get arrested, throwing water bottles, rocks and other projectiles at the oncoming police.“As many of the protesters became more combative, continued to throw projectiles, and attempted to grab officers’ weapons, officers then employed the use of smoke canisters and pepper balls.” Monahan’s statement also described “caches of glass bottles, baseball bats and metal poles hidden along the street.”
Here is Monahan's full statement:
The United States Park Police (USPP) is committed to the peaceful expression of First Amendment rights. However, this past weekend’s demonstrations at Lafayette Park and across the National Mall included activities that were not part of a peaceful protest, which resulted in injuries to USPP officers in the line of duty, the destruction of public property and the defacing of memorials and monuments. During four days of demonstrations, 51 members of the USPP were injured; of those, 11 were transported to the hospital and released and three were admitted.Multiple agencies assisted the USPP in responding to and quelling the acts of destruction and violence over the course of the weekend in order to protect citizens and property.
On Monday, June 1, the USPP worked with the United States Secret Service to have temporary fencing installed inside Lafayette Park. At approximately 6:33 pm, violent protestors on H Street NW began throwing projectiles including bricks, frozen water bottles and caustic liquids. The protestors also climbed onto a historic building at the north end of Lafayette Park that was destroyed by arson days prior. Intelligence had revealed calls for violence against the police, and officers found caches of glass bottles, baseball bats and metal poles hidden along the street.
To curtail the violence that was underway, the USPP, following established policy, issued three warnings over a loudspeaker to alert demonstrators on H Street to evacuate the area. Horse mounted patrol, Civil Disturbance Units and additional personnel were used to clear the area. As many of the protestors became more combative, continued to throw projectiles, and attempted to grab officers’ weapons, officers then employed the use of smoke canisters and pepper balls. No tear gas was used by USPP officers or other assisting law enforcement partners to close the area at Lafayette Park. Subsequently, the fence was installed.
Throughout the demonstrations, the USPP has not made any arrests. The USPP will always support peaceful assembly but cannot tolerate violence to citizens or officers or damage to our nation’s resources that we are entrusted to protect.
First, the assembly was not peaceful.
Second, the park police tried to get them out of the park a half an hour before Trump walked across the street. They would not leave. Legally, they were ordered to leave, and they would not leave.
This is the background for the so-called peaceful demonstration reported by the media.
In short, the mainstream media's reports were a pack of lies. This was not a mistake. This was deliberate.
CONCLUSION
In a time in which America's ghettos are being torn apart by revolutionaries who either pretend to be peaceful protesters or who mix in with them, the park across the street from the White House deserves special consideration. I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to figure this out.
Consider this scenario. It was 2016. The peaceful protesters in the park were members of the Ku Klux Klan. Because of Klan violence across the United States, there was a 7 PM curfew. The Atty. Gen. had ordered the park cleared of Klansmen earlier in the day. It was 6:45. President Obama walked across the street to visit the Episcopal Church. The Klansmen started throwing rocks at the police when they were asked to leave.
How would the media have reported that story? Would they have emphasized the pushback by park authorities and the police to clear the park of peace-loving Klansmen, whose only goal was to promote justice and a sense of fair play? I don't think so. The American media have this rule: different strokes for different folks. What would have been reported as an assault against President Obama has become an assault on peaceful demonstrators by President Trump.
Any commentator who initially promoted the media's story as true, and who used this to beat up the evil Trump, who does not recant publicly, admitting that he made a mistake, and apologizing, is not to be trusted. He is not committed to the truth. He has an anti-Trump agenda that he thinks is more important than reporting the facts.