Federal law enforcement officers, including those in the U.S. Park Police and Secret Service, cleared out Lafayette Square on Monday so President Trump could make a triumphant walk from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church for a cheap photo opportunity.
Everything else is a sideshow.
It’s troublesome, amid the peaceful protesting and the violence and looting, that Trump is concerned more about his image and the illusion of “strength” than the more challenging duty of the office: leadership.
Trump, who watches a whole lot more television than Fox News, was no doubt bothered by the jabs leveled about “hiding in his bunker” more than anything else. He wanted to rectify that. What better way to project “strength” than by strolling out the White House’s front door, marching across Lafayette Square over to the “Church of the Presidents,” and triumphantly raising a Bible over his head?
Of course, the debate isn’t about Trump’s stunt. Partisans have reduced the issue to fighting over what constitutes “tear gas” and what does not. The earliest stories all said law enforcement used “tear gas” to aid in clearing out the park. The Park Police refuted that, saying that officers used “smoke canisters and pepper balls.” Naturally, the press should get it right. But with chaos on the ground and smoke combined with a substance that causes the eyes to tear up, calling it “tear gas” is not an egregious error.
Officers of the Park Police also said that they didn’t know the president was going to walk to the church and they began moving protesters out of the park in advance of the 7:00 p.m. citywide curfew because protesters started throwing items at them. My colleague, Timothy Carney, was there and didn’t witness anyone throwing anything at officers until after they began to move people out of the area.
I spoke with a former Secret Service agent who worked the presidential detail and used a very colorful metaphor to describe the Park Police comments. But let’s say this source said the excuse was “nonsense.”
According to the former agent, the area in front of the White House is tricky when it comes to jurisdiction. The asphalt of Pennsylvania Avenue is controlled, technically, by the Metropolitan Police Department. The sidewalks and the park are under the Park Police. The uniformed division of the Secret Service creates the zone of protection necessary whenever the president steps outside the White House.
All coordination of different law enforcement agencies goes through the Joint Operation Command Center of the Secret Service. The former agent said clearing Lafayette Square and the Pennsylvania Avenue area in front of the White House is a relatively routine event. A misplaced tourist backpack can get the area cleared. When it happens, it is all run through the command center, ensuring that all law enforcement agencies get notified.
The Secret Service has the legal authority to set up zones of protection. The agency creates the zone, and anyone entering that area without authorization is subject to fines and possible imprisonment. What that simply means is that wherever the president goes in the United States, the Secret Service determines, under federal law, what area gets cleared out.
Reports say that Anthony Ornato, who serves as deputy chief of staff for operations in the White House, coordinated all the logistics involved. Ornato previously served in the Secret Service, so he’d have direct knowledge of how it would all play out.
As it stands, however, Trump and his supporters are getting what they want at the moment: They’ve avoided dealing with the real issue of the president having protesters forcefully removed so he could pretend he’s “strong” and wasn’t afraid to walk around in the middle of mayhem. We’ve been down this road before, and it’s a game Trump’s critics always get sucked into playing.
Instead of focusing on the more significant issue, Trump and his defenders attempt to shift the debate to minor details, using that as a means of discounting the entire story. It’s the same in the other direction. When Trump makes an outlandish blanket claim, defenders find anecdotal examples (Trump’s recent tirades over mail-in ballot fraud is a great example) to “prove” that “Trump was right.”
Don’t play the game.
The bigger picture is that when the leader of the free world needed to show some actual leadership, he resorted to the cheap reality show shtick that serves as the standard in Trump’s administration.
