The Stormtroopers in Portland Are Emblematic of Everything That Is President Trump

From Chris Cilizza of CNN: "Over the past week, Portland, Oregon, has become the somewhat unlikely epicenter of unrest over the death of George Floyd and the federal response to the protests that have sprung up around the country in its wake. At the moment, federal law enforcement officials and protesters are locked in a tense standoff that is centered in the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse in downtown Portland."

The Kafkaesque nightmare endured last week by Mark Pettibone in Portland, Oregon is the product of the Department of Homeland Security's response to the ongoing protests. To begin, let's review what happened to Mr. Pettibone as an example of Trump's new law and order campaign. From Katie Shepherd and Mark Berman of the Washington Post,

"Pettibone said he was scared when men in green military fatigues and generic "police' patches jumped out of an unmarked minivan early Wednesday. Pettibone said that when several men in fatigues approached him, his first instinct was to run.

He did not know whether the men were police or far-right extremists, who frequently don military-like outfits and harass left-leaning protesters in Portland. In his account, the 29-year-old said he made it about a half-block before he realized there would be no escape.

Then, he sank to his knees, hands in the air.

"I was terrified," Pettibone said. "It seemed like it was out of a horror/sci-fi, like a Philip K. Dick novel. It was like being preyed upon."

He was detained and searched. One man asked him if he had any weapons; he did not. They drove him to the federal courthouse and placed him in a holding cell, he said. Two officers eventually returned to read his Miranda rights and ask if he would waive those rights to answer a few questions; he did not.

Almost as suddenly as they had grabbed him off the street, the men let him go. The federal officers who snatched him off the street as he was walking home from a peaceful protest did not tell him why he had been detained or provide him any record of an arrest, he told The Post. As far as he knows, he has not been charged with any crimes. And, Pettibone said, he did not know who detained him."

To continue, what happened to Mark Pettibone and the appalling, ongoing abuse of the people of Portland is the product of all the incompetence, narcissism and malevolence we've endured from Donald Trump in the past four years. Specifically:

1. Everything Donald Trump says and does is about Donald Trump
Trump and the Department of Homeland Security claim that the federal officers recently deployed to Portland are there to defend the city from "violent anarchists" who have damaged buildings, sought to set fire to federal property and thrown projectiles at officers. Trump has announced that this campaign to inject federal law enforcement into efforts to reduce "violent crime" will be expanded to other cities.

Big surprise, concern over protestors spraying graffiti on the federal courthouse in Portland isn't the real reason for the increased law enforcement presence. From Maggie Haberman, Nick Corasaniti and Annie Karni of the New York Times:

"As President Trump deploys federal agents to Portland, Ore., and threatens to dispatch more to other cities, his re-election campaign is spending millions of dollars on several ominous television ads that promote fear and dovetail with his political message of  "law and order."

The influx of agents in Portland has led to scenes of confrontations and chaos that Mr. Trump and his White House aides have pointed to as they try to burnish a false narrative about Democratic elected officials allowing dangerous protesters to create widespread bedlam."Another example of that false narrative: The Trump campaign is currently running a ad that appears to show protestors attacking a police officer. The photo in question was actually taken at a pro-democracy rally in the Ukraine.

2. Like all Trump campaigns, this one is based on a pack of lies
Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli has retweeted videos and images of Portland, dubbing the unfolding situation "terrorism". Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf has repeatedly referred to protestors as "violent anarchists" whose activities require a stepped-up federal presence in Portland because local law enforcement are not doing their jobs. In reality, the ongoing protests in Portland have been largely peaceful, with criminal activity limited to spraying graffiti at the local federal courthouse.

3. Trump makes every problem worse
Remember, we're talking about the President who's response to the COVID pandemic was to suggest that people inject bleach. Regarding Trump's campaign in Portland. From the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times:"The deployment of federal agents in Portland, Ore., over the objection of state and local officials, to shoot and gas protesters and to snatch people from the street to stuff them into unmarked vans is an unconscionable assault on democracy and a dangerous and needless ratcheting up of tension.

President Trump’s action in defiance of Oregon’s governor and Portland’s mayor has predictably given new life to nonstop protests that began after the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody but at last had begun to peter out. The president has thus employed his wretched talent for exacerbating division and inflaming discord at precisely the time the nation needs a leader to calm overheated passions and fears."

4. Everything Trump does involves the grossest hypocrisy
President Trump actually loves protestors who defy government officials and take over public buildings. Provided, of, course that they agree with his politics. In May, when heavily-armed protestors in Michigan invaded the state Capitol to protest the Governor's stay-at-home order and masking guidelines, Trump had nothing but praise for them. For more discussion of current Trump hypocrisy, I suggest this Dan Froomkin article from Salon.com, in which he notes, "It's not just hypocrisy — it's "Hunger Games"-level hypocrisy, with ample testing for the ruling class while the rest of us fight for scraps and are forcibly enlisted as "warriors" in a battle to restore the rich man's economy."

5. Trump is an absentee President who devotes all his time to media spectacle and trivialities
I highly recommend this recent article by Ezra Klein on Vox.com: Trump, "experienced politics as many Americans do — as televised entertainment — and brought the skills of a television reality star to the (2016) campaign. It was enough.

But Trump never changed his approach. He has continued to treat the presidency as a media spectacle, the work of governance as a dull distraction from the glitter of celebrity. He obsesses over cable news and Twitter conflict and neglects the job Americans hired him to do. And so now he does have a record: More than 120,000 dead from Covid-19 — and counting. An economy in shambles. Coronavirus cases in America exploding, even as they fall across the European Union."

6. Everyone who works for Trump is unqualified and incompetent
Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf may have virtually no qualifications for his job, but he is a former lobbyist who as chief of staff to former DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, helped implement the "zero tolerance" that led to separation of thousands of migrant children from their parents two years ago.

Garrett M. Graff of the Washington Post notes, "Most of the key decision-makers at DHS hold their jobs because the administration has thumbed its nose at the Senate’s constitutional advise-and-consent role and has left key vacancies open for so long that officials are no longer even allowed to call themselves acting leaders. Like Wolf, deputy secretary Ken Cuccinelli is also a temporary appointment, as is the general counsel, Chad Mizelle. The statutes that allow officials to serve in acting roles were crafted over the years with the expectation that presidents would actually attempt to fill the jobs. But that’s not how Trump uses them — just one way in which his presidency has turned into a civics lesson for America in what’s possible if you ignore the spirit of the law and only focus on its letter."

Recently told by local officials in Oregon that the DHS was not wanted or needed in Portland, Wolf threw gasoline on the fire by tweeting, "I offered @DHSgov support to help locally address the situation that’s going on in Portland, and their only response was: please pack up and go home. That’s just not going to happen on my watch."

7. Racism is at the heart of every Trump action
As mentioned earlier, when right-wing activists in Michigan didn't like the restrictions on public activity that come from dealing with COVID, his response was to encourage them to defy the government and "LIBERATE MICHIGAN." Conversely, when the leadership of Black Lives Matter suggested that America needs to replace its racist police institutions, Trump tweeted, "This is Treason, Sedition, Insurrection!"

8. Fascism has come to America
On June 1 near the White House, a cordon of riot gear clad police suddenly and without warning tear-gassed, flash bombed, body-slammed and fired rubber bullets at every citizen within two blocks to clear a path for Trump so he could take a photo holding a Bible. Four years ago, this is EXACTLY what I imagined the Trump presidency would be. This is how a fascist dictator governs.

Regarding recent events in Portland, from an opinion piece by Alexander Reid Ross and Shane Burley for the news agency Haaretz:

"The response of Portland’s police force was disproportionately aggressive. They used batons, flash bangs, and pepper spray, fired tear gas canisters straight at protesters, and attacked reporters, leading to lawsuits and injunctions that altered the way police used crowd control munitions and ensured they treated journalists with the independent observer status they are due under the First Amendment.

Then Trump stepped in. He repurposed an executive order intended for "protecting monuments" to send in federal officers to defend federal buildings with none of the orders of restraint temporarily exhibited by Portland’s own police force and won at such cost. Instead, a peculiar mix of federal officers escalated crowd control methods, blanketing entire sections of downtown Portland in tear gas with little warning or obvious provocation.

A DHS memo admitted that the under-trained federal officers are being deployed in situations for which they haven’t been trained and lack judgment and experience. The Portland police are now working with federal officers, contradicting the understandings made with city officials including the mayor."

"And now their behavior, and that of their White House commander, has become a line in the sand for anyone concerned about civil liberties in today’s America.

"You have these federal officers who are likely exceeding their authority to both patrol the streets of Portland and also abducting people without probable cause," says Juan Chavez of the National Lawyer’s Guild, who told us in a July 19th interview that the point of aggressive policing is to suppress people’s willingness to go into the streets: "The intimidation is most of the point."

He warns of a new U.S. political era: "This is the closest lurch we have had to this type of fascism...Trump is talking about deploying these federal troops to cities where he has already shown his disdain for the people who live there and the leadership of those cities."

Closing note: DHS aircraft landed at Boeing Field in Seattle today. God help us all.

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