While America Struggles for its Soul, Biden Struggles for Relevance

The former vice presidency sees the ghost of Hubert Humphrey.


By JOHN F. HARRIS
06/02/2020

Altitude is a column by POLITICO founding editor John Harris, offering weekly perspective on politics in a moment of radical disruption.

There are many voices who see the violence and despair sweeping America this spring as the natural result of everything President Donald Trump stands for—of his divisive language and policies and worldview.

It is easy to miss, but embedded in these condemnations is a perverse form of praise: The critics do not doubt the efficacy of Trumpian politics. To the contrary, the condemnations assign the president an undeniable agency. There is a clear link between ideas and consequences. People excoriate Trump, and in so doing ratify his relevance.


Relevance is the quality needed most urgently now by Joseph R. Biden Jr.

This is a moment that challenges more than his limited stylistic range. The obstacles for the former vice president are more daunting than the logistics of being housebound in a pandemic. The crisis calls into question the earnest, cheerful, incremental brand of progressivism that animated Biden’s career for a half-century.

The picture of American cities aflame across the continent, in response to what African-Americans credibly regard as widespread police brutality and racism, is a soul-depleting return to an earlier age.

As it happens, it is an age the 77-year-old Biden knows well. He told an audience last year he decided to organize his life around politics during the violent traumas of 1968—the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, and the racial and anti-war riots that ensued across the country that spring and summer.

Biden’s own words make the year a useful prism for viewing both his present circumstances—even a few weeks ago they would have seemed beyond belief—and the broader premises on which a lifetime in politics have rested.

POLITICO DISPATCH: JUNE 2“I am mobilizing all federal resources, civilian and military to stop the rioting and looting.” A look at why President Trump skirted calls for unity amid national demonstrations over the death of George Floyd.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Subscribe on Spotify

Biden was 25 years old for most of 1968, working as a clerk at a Delaware law firm. Forty years would pass, all but four of them in the U.S. Senate, until Biden was tapped as running mate by Barack Obama on his way to becoming the nation’s first African-American president. There was an event that affirmed the essence of Biden’s steady, temperate liberalism—striking evidence that the system is on the level, that history moves toward light, that people of good will can overcome America’s original sin of racism.

Could Biden, or even Obama, possibly have imagined 12 years ago how perishable those gains would seem today? How profoundly many African-Americans, and others, believe many institutions are simply not on the level and are not getting gradually better? And how, in such a climate, the voice of a divisive but omnipresent performer like Trump could make Biden seem almost inaudible in the storm?

As it happens, 1968 also offers another vivid example of a progressive but conventional politician out of step with the urgencies of the moment. Although Biden, like many Democrats of his generation, often invoked the Kennedys as a political figure he more closely resembles another tragic leader of that time: Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey.

Humphrey that year was defending President Lyndon B. Johnson’s unpopular war in Vietnam, a problem Biden thankfully does not have. But like Biden (who later served with Humphrey in the Senate before his 1978 death), the vice president was a garrulous man whose personal decency and progressive instincts were genuine and widely respected, even by Republicans. And like Biden—at least as 2020 has unfolded so far—Humphrey had trouble finding the right emotional pitch during a year of national anguish.

When he announced his candidacy in late April 1968—a few weeks after King’s murder and not quite six weeks before Kennedy’s—he spoke of wanting to infuse his party with a “politics of joy.”

It was a line that flowed naturally from his own ebullient personality—and seemed shockingly disconnected to the country’s reality. Kennedy mocked him in reply: “It is easy to say this is the politics of happiness—but if you see children starving in the Delta of Mississippi and despair on the Indian reservations, then you know that everybody in America is not satisfied.”


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Humphrey, who had been a leader on civil rights since the 1940s, would have regarded the problems of 2020 as at least a partial failure of his own legacy. Minneapolis---that genial, sensible, sturdy city which Humphrey once served as mayor—was the same place where Officer Derek Chauvin put his knee on George Floyd’s neck and wouldn’t take it off.

If changing circumstances have left Biden with trouble finding his voice, they of course also present him with new opportunities if he can find it. Here is a country simultaneously battling economic depression that, at least temporarily, evokes the 1930s and psychic depression—the result of rage disconnected from hope—that evokes the 1960s. Surely a man who has lived so much history has some lessons to offer.

The former vice president, wearing a mask and taking notes, met on Monday with African-American religious leaders at the Bethel AME Church in his hometown of Wilmington, Del. It was his most extended in-person event in weeks.

He told the group that in coming weeks he would address the problems of “institutional structures” and “institutional racism” in a series of “very serious national speeches.”

Well, there’s something to wait for. Until then, if he wants to avoid sounding like Humphrey in 1968, Biden might do well to recall what himself was thinking and feeling in that year of violence and fragility.

“Unless I’m mistaken,” Biden told Dartmouth University students, “Donald Trump did for your generation what the loss of two of my heroes did for mine,” he told the students, adding, “What they did was make you realize, ‘My God, we’re in trouble.’ ”

What is known about the White House's secret tunnels, bunker

Philip Bump, The Washington Post, Monday, June 1, 2020


Photo: Alex Brandon,
IMAGE 1 OF 5
A member of the U.S. Secret Service, front, stands at her post wearing a mask as other staff member social distance wearing masks, before President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus during a press ... 

WASHINGTON - At some point Friday night, with angry demonstrators gathered just north of the White House, the Secret Service took the unusual step of moving President Donald Trump out of the executive mansion proper and into a secure underground facility. It was understandable, given the violence and vandalism that had accompanied protests in Minnesota earlier in the week and erupted near the White House, as well. But it offered an odd contrast with Trump's tweets on Saturday morning, which made a particular point of noting that he was watching the conflict between his security team and the protesters.


It also raised a question: The White House has an underground bunker? It does. In fact, it apparently has more than one - and other ways in which the president can be protected.



Beneath the White House's East Wing is the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, built during World War II as a protective measure for President Franklin Roosevelt. It's where then-Vice President Richard Cheney went during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Former first lady Laura Bush described being evacuated to the facility that same day in a book published in early 2010.

"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. We walked along old tile floors with pipes hanging from the ceiling and all kinds of mechanical equipment. The PEOC is designed to be a command center during emergencies, with televisions, phones, and communications facilities."

She describes being taken to a small conference room with a large table. The National Archives later released photos of members of the George W. Bush administration in that room that day.

If the New York Times' reporting about Trump's movement on Friday is accurate, it's likely that this was the facility the president was taken to. According to Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman, Trump was taken "to the underground bunker used in the past during terrorist attacks," likely referring to the attacks of Sept. 11.


The other, larger, newer facility wasn't in place that day.

In fact, it was built because of lessons learned after the 9/11 attacks.

Ronald Kessler, who wrote about the new construction in his 2018 book, "The Trump White House: Changing the Rules of the Game," spoke with The Washington Post by phone on Monday to describe the project.

"After that attack, the national security people recognized that that just is not going to cut it," Kessler said, referring to the old facility. "That's just not sufficient."

"The idea was, before that, that if there were a nuclear attack or something - biological, radiological attack - that the White House staff and the president's people could be evacuated to some remote location at West Virginia or Pennsylvania," he continued. "But then they realized after the 9/11 attack that they could never leave Washington, certainly by vehicle, because all the roads were clogged. It would take too long. And even by helicopter, it would take - it would be very risky, given that the country was under attack. So they came up with this scheme to create a totally separate facility, an underground bunker under the North Lawn."

In 2010, the General Services Administration began a large project outside the section of the White House where the Oval Office and offices of the president's senior advisers are located. The GSA insisted that the work was meant to replace existing infrastructure at the White House, but the scale and secrecy of the project belied that.

"The GSA went to great lengths to keep the work secret," the Associated Press reported in 2012, when construction neared completion, "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."

"It's a bunker, right?" The Post's Christian Davenport wrote in 2011. "It's gotta be a bunker."

According to Kessler, it was.

"What it consists of is five stories deep into the ground with its own air supply and food supply," he 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."

The purpose is to serve as a command center and living quarters for the president and other members of the president's staff. The air supply is self-contained, Kessler said, and the facility is stocked with enough food to last for months.

When Trump arrived at the White House in 2017, he and a few select officials were given a tour of the facility, which remains unstaffed, a sort of subterranean "break glass in case of emergency" option.

Kessler pointed out that escaping the White House was still an option. There are existing tunnels (like the one Laura Bush employed) under the building, including at least two that leave the mansion entirely. One leads to the Treasury Building and, eventually, up to an unmarked entrance on H Street. The other emerges onto the South Lawn, where the president can access Marine One if needed.

For all the drama surrounding the events of Friday night, Trump's physical safety was secured in a comparatively unexciting way: in a secure room under the East Wing of the White House. Assuming it exists, the five-story, self-contained facility closer to the Oval Office remains unoccupied, as it probably has since it was built.

As far as we know.


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World outrage grows at Floyd's death; EU 'shocked, appalled'

Lorne Cook and Rick Rycroft, Associated Press 

Updated 5:27 am PDT, Tuesday, June 2, 2020


Photo: AP
IMAGE 7 OF 18
In this image made from video, protesters hold up placards reading "Black Lives Matter" during a peaceful rally in Perth, Australia, Monday, June 1, 2020. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered to protest the death ..

BRUSSELS (AP) — From Sydney to Paris, world outrage at George Floyd's death in the U.S. was growing Tuesday as the European Union's top diplomat said the bloc was “shocked and appalled” by it and thousands marched in Australia's largest city.

Chanting “Black Lives Matter” and “I can’t breathe," about 3,000 protesters held an impassioned but peaceful march through central Sydney on Tuesday demanding fundamental change in race relations.

In France, protests were planned for the evening in Paris and across the country after calls from the family of a French black man who died shortly after he was arrested by police in 2016. A protest was also planned in The Hague, Netherlands.


Floyd died last week after he was pinned to the pavement by a white police officer in Minneapolis who put his knee on the handcuffed black man’s neck until he stopped breathing. His death set off protests that spread across America.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell's remarks in Brussels were the strongest so far to come out of the 27-nation bloc, saying Floyd's death was a result of an abuse of power.

Borrell told reporters that “like the people of the United States, we are shocked and appalled by the death of George Floyd.” He underlined that Europeans “support the right to peaceful protest, and also we condemn violence and racism of any kind, and for sure, we call for a de-escalation of tensions.”

Protesters around the world have expressed solidarity with Americans demonstrating against Floyd’s death.

In Sydney, a mostly Australian crowd, but also including protesters from the U.S. and elsewhere, marched for around a half-mile under police escort in the authorized, two-hour long demonstration.

Many said they had been inspired by a mixture of sympathy for African Americans amid ongoing violent protests in the U.S., but had turned out to also call for change in Australia’s treatment of its indigenous population, particularly that involving police.

“I can’t breathe” notably were the final words of David Dungay, a 26-year-old Aboriginal man who died in a Sydney prison in 2015 while being restrained by five guards.

“I’m here for my people, and for our fallen brothers and sisters around the world,” said Sydney indigenous woman Amanda Hill, 46, who attended the rally with her daughter and two nieces.

“What’s happening in America shines a light on the situation here. It doesn’t matter if it’s about the treatment of black men and women from here or from another country; enough is enough.”

A total of 432 indigenous Australians have died in police detention since a 1991 Royal Commission — Australia’s highest level of official inquiry — into Aboriginal deaths in custody, according to a running analysis by The Guardian newspaper.

Australia has also never signed a treaty with the country’s indigenous population, who suffer higher-than-average rates of infant mortality and poor health, plus shorter life expectancy and lower levels of education and employment than white Australians.

Ray O’Shannassy, one of the rally’s organisers, said he hoped that, touched off by the situation in the U.S., the upswelling of protest seen in Sydney could, this time, lead to long-term change. A larger rally is planned for Sydney on Saturday.

In France, family and friends of Adama Traore have called for gatherings in the evening in Paris and across the country.

The Traore case has become emblematic of the fight against police brutality in the country. The circumstances of the death of the French 24-year-old man of Malian origin, just after his police arrest in 2016, are still under investigation by French justice authorities.

Paris police formally banned the protest in the French capital as all public gatherings are still not allowed in the country amid the virus crisis.

The lawyer for two of the three police officers involved in the French man's arrest, Rodolphe Bosselut, said the Floyd and Traore cases “have strictly nothing to do with each other” because the circumstances are different.

Bosselut told the AP the death of Adama Traore is not linked with the conditions of his arrest but due to various other factors, including a pre-existing medical condition.

Traore’s family said he died from asphyxiation because of police tactics.

In a video message posted on social media, Traore’s sister, Assa Traore, said her brother and Floyd "had the same words, their last words: I can’t breathe,” she said.

In Europe on Monday, thousands spilled across streets in Amsterdam to denounce police brutality while around 1,000 people gathered in Barcelona at the gates of the U.S. Consulate for a peaceful protest.

Germany’s foreign minister said Tuesday that peaceful protests in the U.S. following Floyd’s death are “understandable and more than legitimate,” Heiko Maas said “I can only express my hope that the peaceful protests do not continue to lead to violence, but even more express the hope that these protests have an effect in the United States.”

Meanwhile, more African leaders are speaking up over the killing of Floyd.

“It cannot be right that, in the 21st century, the United States, this great bastion of democracy, continues to grapple with the problem of systemic racism,” Ghana’s president, Nana Akufo-Addo, said in a statement, adding that black people the world over are shocked and distraught.

Kenyan opposition leader and former Prime Pinister Raila Odinga offered a prayer for the U.S., “that there be justice and freedom for all human beings who call America their country.”

Like some in Africa who have spoken out, Odinga also noted troubles at home, saying the judging of people by character instead of skin color “is a dream we in Africa, too, owe our citizens.”

And South Africa’s finance minister, Tito Mboweni, recalled leading a small protest outside the U.S. Embassy several years ago over the apparent systemic killings of blacks. Mboweni said the U.S. ambassador at the time, Patrick Gaspard, “invited me to his office and said: ‘What you see is nothing, it is much worse.’”

___

Rick Rycroft reported from Sydney. Associated Press writers Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, Aritz Parra in Madrid, Spain, Franck Jordans in Berlin, Germany and Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed to this report.

___

Follow AP’s latest news about the protests at https://apnews.com/GeorgeFloyd

BIDEN COMES OUT 

Biden takes a knee in first non-virtual campaign event since March

OF HIS BUNKER

Annie Linskey, The Washington Post Published 7:15 am PDT, Tuesday, June 2, 2020


Photo: Andrew Harnik, AP
IMAGE 1 OF 3
Democratic presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden visits Bethel AME Church in Wilmington, Del., Monday, June 1, 2020,


Joe Biden, holding his first non-virtual campaign event in months, listened Monday as activists sharply criticized his record on crime legislation. He took notes as they questioned the Obama-Biden record on race.

And posing for a photo with the activists, the 77-year-old presumptive Democratic nominee took a knee - a highly symbolic act that's come to signal support for the demonstrators protesting police violence across the country.


The event - and a virtual discussion with mayors struggling to manage the protests - showcased Biden's effort to demonstrate leadership on the crisis and create a contrast with President Trump, whose uneven response drew condemnation Monday from within his own party.


In coming weeks, Biden said, he will make "very serious national speeches about where I think we have to go, what we have to do." He also said he plans to release a new economic proposal next week focused heavily on housing, education and access to capital.



Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Del., who was among those meeting with Biden, said she appreciated his "showing up," taking issue with those who may feel Biden's response has been insufficient. "For those who are out there complaining, we've got a president that ain't even showing up, that doesn't even care," she said. "Come on."


Biden himself tweeted "Leaders listen" after the event, along with a photo of himself seated in a folding chair at the church as a woman addressed him.

Trump's day included a conference call with governors during which he called them "weak" and urged them to "dominate" those who've come out to protest police brutality and racism in the country.


Trump on Monday criticized the demonstrators for violent actions. "These are acts of domestic terror," he said, calling them a "crime against God" and threatening to deploy the military. Trump has also issued a series of hard-hitting tweets referring to people in the streets as "thugs" and threatening them with "vicious dogs" if they breach the White House fence.

Some Trump supporters have urged him to deliver a formal address on the crisis, but he has so far demurred. Biden also has yet to make a major speech on the events, though he has now promised he will, and he met with protesters on Sunday.

At a news conference Monday, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, criticized Trump's response, saying, "He is simply nowhere to be found."


During Biden's visit with activists at the Bethel AME Church in Wilmington, Delaware, he largely listened to the activists at his first formal in-person campaign event since the coronavirus caused his operation and much of the country to shut down in March.

Biden has left the area around his immediate home only a handful of times since then, laying a wreath on his son's grave on Memorial Day and touring some of the protests in Wilmington on Sunday.

At the church, the Rev. Shanika Perry, Bethel's youth pastor, pressed Biden on the 1994 crime bill he championed, which many African American leaders blame for the mass incarceration of young black men in the ensuing years.

Biden has since disavowed portions of the bill, but Perry said it continues to hurt Biden's cause among young African Americans. "It's been difficult to serve as a surrogate to them, because they have great issues with the participation in that," Perry said. "And so they want to know how do you plan to undo the impact of the mass incarceration and the things that have resulted from that particular crime bill."

Saying that "representation matters," Perry also offered Biden advice for picking a running mate: "Let me go on record and say, we want a black woman."

Biden has promised to select a woman as his running mate, and a growing number of civil right leaders are pressing him to pick an African American or Latina, given the way the pandemic and the recent killings of black men have laid starkly bare the issues faced by communities of color.

Others at the church suggested that former president Barack Obama, and Biden when he served as Obama's vice president, could have done more to help those communities.

"Over the eight years you were vice president there were lots of successes, but the African American community did not experience the same economic opportunity and upward mobility that they did in the 90s," said state Sen. Darius Brown, D-Del.

"The people in this room, we love you," Brown added. "But we're here not only to love you but to push you, because if we can publicly support every other Democratic base, then we should publicly support the African American Democratic base."

Brown also brought up the idea of paying reparations to black Americans, an issue that was debated heavily during the Democratic primary. Biden has said he would study the idea.

"It shouldn't be a study of reparations. It should be funding reparations," Brown said as Biden listened, occasionally taking notes.

Biden said the multiple crises wracking the nation provide a painful window into long-standing inequalities, echoing a message sent by many civil rights leaders.

"The Band-Aid has been ripped off by this pandemic and this president," Biden said. "Nobody can pretend any longer what this is all about. Nobody can pretend who has been carrying us on their back. It's been minorities. It's been blacks. It's been Hispanics."

As the meeting wound down, Biden asked for a moment of prayer. Afterward, he posed for group photos, at one point taking a knee in front of the group.

Even as Biden took a small step toward in-person campaigning, signs persisted of covid-19's impact. No microphones were used in the church, to avoid spreading the virus. Biden wore a medical mask, and others in the church used face coverings and sat far from one another.

Later, during the virtual round table with mayors from Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and St. Louis, Biden pressed the city leaders for ideas on changing police practices.

"There is systemic racism, white supremacy - it's real. You see it," Biden said. "I think we all see it, but if you're African American, you see it more clearly, in almost every aspect of your life."

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BIDEN CAME OUT OF HIS BUNKER AND SPOKE THIS MORNING, 

Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) · Twitter
https://twitter.com/JoeBiden

The President held up a bible at St. John’s church yesterday. If he opened it instead of brandishing it, he could have learned something: That we are all called to love one another as we love ourselves. That’s hard work. But it’s the work of America.
Twitter · 31 secs ago

A country is crying out for leadership. Leadership that can unite us, leadership that brings us together, leadership that can recognize the pain and deep grief of communities that have had a knee on their neck for a long time.
Twitter · 15 mins ago


Let us vow to make this, at last, an era of action to reverse systemic racism with long overdue and concrete changes. This morning I'm speaking in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on where we are and where we need to go. Tune in: www.pscp.tv/w/caUCzDFvU

Twitter · 52 mins ago

HE CAME OUT OF HIS BUNKER AND SAW HIS SHADOW
Biden visited a Black Lives Matter protest site in Delaware as Trump rages on Twitter against demonstrators

Eliza Relman BUSINESS INSIDER  May 31, 2020

Democratic U.S. presidential candidate and former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden visits a site of the protest over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody, in Wilmington. Reuters Images via Biden campaign

Former Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday made an unannounced visit to a site in Wilmington, Delaware where protests against police brutality and racism took place the night before. 

Leaving his home for the second time in a week, Biden recognized the death of George Floyd, a black man who was killed in Minneapolis police custody last week.
"The original sin of the country still stains our nation today," Biden said in a video released Friday. "We need justice for George Floyd." 

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump repeatedly attacked protesters and threatened violence against them on Twitter. 

Former Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday made an unannounced visit to a site in Wilmington, Delaware where protests against police brutality and racism took place the night before.

Leaving his home for the second time in a week, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee recognized the death of George Floyd, a black man who was killed in Minneapolis police custody last week. His campaign posted a photo of Biden kneeling on the ground facing a black man also kneeling with his young son.

Biden has attempted to strike a unifying tone in his public statements as demonstrations continued in at least 75 US cities over the weekend.


—Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 31, 2020

In a five-minute video released on Friday, Biden urged the country to come together and address the "national crisis" of police brutality against black people.

"The original sin of the country still stains our nation today," he said. "We need justice for George Floyd."


"We are a country with an open wound. None of us can turn away. None of us can be silent," Biden wrote in an accompanying tweet. "None of us any longer can hear those words — 'I can't breathe' — and do nothing. We must commit, as a nation, to pursue justice with every ounce of our being."

The Biden campaign announced in a Sunday email to reporters that the candidate will meet with community leaders in Wilmington on Monday morning and will hold a virtual roundtable with mayors afterwards.

Biden's response to Floyd's death and the ensuing protests has been markedly different than the president's. Over the past few days, Trump tweeted out a slew of attacks on the protesters, including one message quoting a white police officer who sparked a race riot in the 1960s.

"When the looting starts, the shooting starts," Trump declared in a message that was later flagged by Twitter for violating the platform's policy against content that "glorifies violence."


In a series of tweets on Saturday, Trump warned that the Secret Service was "just waiting for action," and would use "vicious dogs" and "ominous weapons" against protesters who breached the White House security boundary outside his residence.

BLM ALLY
Popovich rips Trump's leadership amid George Floyd protests

By Jeff McDonald , Monday, June 1, 2020


Photo: Jeff Chiu /Associated Press

Gregg Popovich is part of an NBA Coaches Association committee formed to address racial conflict in each of the league’s cities.


Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, a frequent critic of President Donald Trump, has sounded off on what he sees as a lack of national leadership in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd.
With protests begetting violent riots throughout the country, Pop called longtime friend Dave Zirin at the The Nation to vent.

Some highlights from Popovich:

“The thing that strikes me is that we all see this police violence and racism and we’ve seen it all before but nothing changes. That’s why these protests have been so explosive. But without leadership and an understanding of what the problem is, there will never be change. And white Americans have avoided reckoning with this problem forever because it’s been our privilege to be able to avoid it. That also has to change.”

RELATED: For Popovich, speaking out is intended to be uncomfortable

And also:

“It’s unbelievable. If Trump had a brain, even if it was 99 percent cynical, he would come out and say something to unify people. But he doesn’t care about bringing people together. Even now. That’s how deranged he is. It’s all about him. It’s all about what benefits him personally. It’s never about the greater good. And that’s all he’s ever been.”

And again:

“It’s so clear what needs to be done. We need a president to come out and say simply that ‘Black Lives Matter.’ Just say those three words. But he won’t and he can’t. He can’t because it’s more important to him to mollify the small group of followers who validate his insanity."

He’s not just divisive. He’s a destroyer. To be in his presence makes you die. He will eat you alive for his own purposes. I’m appalled that we have a leader who can’t say ‘Black Lives Matter.’ That’s why he hides in the White House basement. He is a coward. He creates a situation and runs away like a grade-schooler. Actually, I think it’s best to ignore him. There is nothing he can do to make this better because of who he is: a deranged idiot.”

Popovich went on to call the nationwide protests "very necessary" but said "they need to be organized better."

Popovich: "When Dr. King did a protest, you knew when to show, when to come back the next day. But if you’re just organizing protests and everyone is coming and going in every direction, it doesn’t work that way. If it was nonviolent, they knew to be nonviolent, but this is muddled. More leadership would be very welcome so these incredible mass demonstrations can’t be used by people for other means."

GOP REVEALS ITS RACIST FASCIST CORE

GOP Sen. Tom Cotton calls for the US Army's toughest soldiers to quell 'domestic terrorism' and suggests protesters should be shown no mercy

IT'S THE GOP NOT JUST TRUMP

Eliza Relman BUSINESS INSIDER 6/1/2020

Sen. Tom Cotton on Fox News Screenshot/Fox News


Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, on Monay pushed for the use of military force against Black Lives Matter demonstrators, some of whom have engaged in looting and other criminal acts. 

"If local politicians will not do their most basic job to protect our citizens, let's see how these anarchists respond when the 101st Airborne is on the other side of the street," Cotton said on Fox News. 

In a tweet, Cotton wrote that law enforcement should give "no quarter" to "insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and looters," using a military term to suggest protesters should be shown no mercy. 

Cotton's comments echoed Trump's rhetoric, which has included threatening "the unlimited power" of the US military against protesters.

Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, pushed for the use of military force against demonstrators who've taken to the streets and, in some cases, protested violently against police brutality and racism.

"If local politicians will not do their most basic job to protect our citizens, let's see how these anarchists respond when the 101st Airborne is on the other side of the street," Cotton said during a Monday morning interview on Fox News.

Cotton, who's closely aligned with President Donald Trump, elaborated on his position on Twitter, calling violence at protests "domestic terrorism."

"We need to have zero tolerance for this destruction," he wrote, calling protesters "Antifa terrorists." "And, if necessary, the 10th Mountain, 82nd Airborne, 1st Cav, 3rd Infantry — whatever it takes to restore order. No quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and looters."

The military term "no quarter" means a commander will not accept the lawful surrender of an enemy combatant and suggests the captive will instead be killed. "No quarter" is a war crime under the Geneva Convention, to which the US is subject. 

\
The president later retweeted Cotton and endorsed his statements.
—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 1, 2020

Cotton's comments echoed Trump's rhetoric, which has included threatening "the unlimited power" of the US military against protesters. Trump also threatened demonstrators outside the White House with "vicious dogs" and "ominous weapons" he said the Secret Service was prepared to use against them.

"That's when people would have been really badly hurt, at least," the president added.

In another tweet, Trump quoted a racist white police chief who sparked riots in the 1960s saying, "When the looting starts, the shooting starts."

Civil rights leaders and many others, including DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, have called Trump's comments racist dog whistles.
—The American Independent (@AmerIndependent) June 1, 2020
—Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) June 1, 2020

Fox News built a secret team led by a former Trump aide to discredit the company's critics

Eliza Relman BUSINESS INSIDER 6/1/2020

News headlines scroll above the Fox News studios in the News Corporation headquarters building, in New York, Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2017. AP


Fox Corp has hired a former aide to President Donald Trump to lead a covert team of conservatives with the mission of discrediting Fox's critics, The New York Times reported. 

The company hired Raj Shah, a former deputy White House press secretary, last year as a senior vice president.

Since then, Shah has hired at least two former conservative media reporters to help him attempt to discredit Fox's critics, including the left-leaning groups Media Matters and Sleeping Giants. 

Fox Corp has hired a former aide to President Donald Trump to lead a covert team of conservatives with the mission of discrediting Fox's critics, The New York Times' Ben Smith, reported Sunday.

The company hired Raj Shah, a former deputy White House press secretary who previously directed opposition research against Hillary Clinton at the Republican National Committee, last year as a senior vice president.

This year, Smith reported, Shah has been building a staff that includes two former writers for the right-wing Washington Free Beacon, Elliott Schwartz and Alex Griswold. Schwartz also previously directed Jeb Bush's 2016 presidential campaign war room.

The team is tasked with attacking and attempting to discredit Fox's critics, including the left-leaning Media Matters, which regularly reports on Fox, and Sleeping Giants, a social media account that's attempted to pressure companies to stop advertising on Fox News.

Smith wrote the team's role is to "defend Fox from criticism from progressive outlets like Media Matters and Sleeping Giants on social media, protect advertising dollars and discredit critics," according to three sources. It's unclear what efforts the team has been involved with.

Neither Schwartz nor Griswold, both of whom are active on Twitter, have publicly identified themselves as Fox employees.

There is a well-established revolving door between Fox and the Trump campaign and administration, and Fox Corp has long employed a robust PR team. But it is unusual for a news organization to have a team responsible for discrediting its critics.

Fox Corp declined Business Insider's request for comment.

President Trump says he is designating Antifa as a domestic terror organization following widespread protests. There are no legal consequences to that designation.

Alex Nicoll
May 31, 2020, 1:28 PM

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Antifa take to the streets in Washington, DC, July 6, 2019. 

Evelyn Hockstein/The Washington Post


America has seen major protests across the country for five nights, with frequent clashes between the police and protestors, following the death of George Floyd. 

President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr have both blamed the worst violence on anarchists and Antifa, a left-wing political movement. 

On Sunday, President Trump tweeted that he would designate Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. 

There are no legal consequences for designating a group as a domestic terror organization, but all 56 regional FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces have been monitoring the protests. 

President Donald Trump tweeted Sunday afternoon that the United States would be designating the left-wing political movement Antifa a domestic terrorist organization.

The news comes after five nights of protests across America protesting the police killing of George Floyd. Saturday saw the highest tension yet, with police shooting tear gas and less-lethal projectiles at protestors, some of who responded by throwing bricks and bottles and, in some cities, lighting police vehicles on fire and looting stores.

On Saturday, the President blamed Antifa, short for anti-fascist, and other left-wing groups for the riots and looting.

"The memory of George Floyd is being dishonored by rioters, looters and anarchists. The violence and vandalism is being led by Antifa and other radical left-wing groups who are terrorizing the innocent, destroying jobs, hurting business and burning down buildings. The main victims of this horrible, horrible situation are the citizens who live in these once lovely communities," the president said.


The State Department can designate foreign organizations as terrorist organizations, but there is no law governing domestic organizations. At the moment, it is unclear what President Trump's tweet refers to in concrete legal steps. The Patriot Act defines domestic terrorism, but there are no federal crimes tied to domestic terror.

Trump said in July of 2019 that he was considering declaring Antifa an "Organization of Terror."

Another challenge is the nature of Antifa, which is less of an organization, with structure and leaders, than a decentralized movement. Antifa is a global movement largely made up of anarchists, socialists, and other left-wing groups that oppose right-wing authoritarianism and white supremacy, sometimes violently. Unlike other radical groups, there is no controlling organizational structure, choosing instead to operate semi-autonomously and without leaders.

Antifa is known for its black-bloc protest tactics, where protestors wear all black and cover up their face so that they can't be identified by police or right-wing opponents.


Antifa's name comes from the pre-World War 2 German group Antifaschistische Aktion, which resisted the Nazi German state, and birthed the design of Antifa's now infamous flag.

Getty Images

Antifa gained much more public attention under the Trump presidency, as the movement disrupted events with far-right speakers across the country, such as Vice and Proud Boy founder Gavin McInnis's speech at the Metroplitan Republican Club. Most notably, the organization faced off against the white nationalist Unite the Right rally.

Noted black clergyman and left-wing activist Cornel West told Democracy Now that Antifa protected him and other clergy from the worst of the white nationalist violence.

"We would have been crushed like cockroaches were it not for the anarchists and the anti-fascists," he told Democracy Now. "You had police holding back and just allowing fellow citizens to go at each other."


Trump, in his response to the Charlottesville protest, said that he blamed Antifa and the "alt-left" for violence as well.

"What about the alt-left who came charging at the alt-right?" Trump said at a press conference.

Attorney General William Barr also blamed "anarchist and far-left extremist" groups for the violence on Saturday. On Sunday, the Attorney General's office released guidance that said that the his office is working with the 56 regional FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces to "identify criminal organizers and instigators."

AG Barr: "To identify criminal organizers and instigators, and to coordinate federal resources with our state and local partners, federal law enforcement is using our existing network of 56 regional FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF). " pic.twitter.com/mueuIo8LSa— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) May 31, 2020

It is unclear what other avenues the federal government may use to pursue enforcement actions against Antifa, but the FBI Agents Association has been lobbying for the creation of a domestic terrorism law.

Twitter flags tweet from Rep. Matt Gaetz about wanting to 'hunt down' protesters, noting that it glorifies violence
Grace Panetta

U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) speaks to members of the media outside the hearing Michael Cohen, former attorney and fixer for President Donald Trump, testifies at before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform at Rayburn House Office Building February 27, 2019 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Alex Wong/Getty Images
On Monday, Twitter flagged a tweet from Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida as "glorifying violence."

The platform turned off replies and likes on a Monday message from Gaetz stating: "Now that we clearly see Antifa as terrorists, can we hunt them down like we do those in the Middle East?"

THAT IS ISIS A FASCIST MOVEMENT NOT ANTI FASCISTS ANTIFA FOR SHORT
SO IF YOU OPPOSE ANTI FASCISM YOU KNOW THAT MAKES YOU A FASCIST 

The flagging of Gaetz's tweet comes amid a broader push from Twitter to fact-check politicians' tweets and crack down on those from public figures that violate the platform's rules. 

Twitter flagged a message from Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida about wanting to hunt down protesters as "glorifying violence" on Monday.

Gatez posted the tweet shortly before 2 p.m. on Monday, writing, "Now that we clearly see Antifa as terrorists, can we hunt them down like we do those in the Middle East?

Twitter turned off replies and likes, and added a note that it violated the platform's rules.
—kate conger (@kateconger) June 1, 2020

The flagging of Gaetz's tweet comes amid a broader push from Twitter to fact-check politicians' tweets and crack down on those from public figures that violate the platform's rules.

Last week, Twitter similarly flagged a tweet from President Donald Trump as violating their rules against glorifying violence but added a notice stating they believed keeping the tweet available to view was "in the public interest" while disabling likes and replies.

Gaetz's tweet was referring to claims from Trump and other Republican officials that Antifa and other left-wing groups are directly contributing to violence.

Over the weekend, Trump posted several tweets blaming "anarchists" and "Antifa" on the violence and looting accompanying protests against police brutality in several American cities. H also said that he would designate Antifa, which is not a hierarchical organization but rather a broad, decentralized movement that resists white supremacy, a domestic terrorist group.

Experts, however, have said there is no legal mechanism for Trump to do so. As Business Insider noted on Sunday, the State Department has the authority to designate foreign organizations as terrorist groups, but there is no legal method to designate domestic actors as such.

Gaetz, a staunch Trump ally who has vocally criticized Twitter's attempts to fact-check politicians, continued to defend his sentiment in a number of follow-up tweets.

"We hunt down terrorists in the Middle East by having our government (not vigilantes) monitor their communications, freeze their money and stop them from committing attacks," he said. "American lives, businesses & property are more deserving of our strong protection than distant sand dunes."

NYPD chief takes a knee with protesters in an act of solidarity
Sarah Al-Arshani INSIDER
6/1/2020

Chief of Department of the New York City Police, Terence Monahan, hugs an activist as protesters paused while walking in New York, Monday, June 1, 2020. AP Photo/Craig Ruttle


New York City's Chief of Departments took a stand of solidarity with George Floyd protestors by taking a knee on Monday. 

Terence Monahan hugged and spoke with protestors in Washington Square Park.

New York City Police Department Chief of Departments took a knee alongside those protesting the death of George Floyd in Washington Square Park on Monday.

Video shows Chief of Departments Terence Monahan taking a knee and hugging and speaking with protestors.

According to WABC, this came after a few people threw bottles at the cops. In a tweet, Fox Correspondent Bryan Llenas said some protestors tried to deescalate the situation.

A protester told Monahan that demonstrators need support and help to organize.

"Thank you for supporting us," one person said in the video. "We gotta continue supporting each other."
—Bryan Llenas (@BryanLlenas) June 1, 2020

The protester also told Monahan: "I'm gonna come to your office, so we can talk. We gone talk so we can organize, alright."

He continued: "We gone continue marching peacefully. I promise you, alright. Have a good day. I love you."

Monahan told protestors to be safe.

"The people who live in New York want New York to end the violence," Monahan said. "Get the intruders that are not from this city the h--- out of here and give us back our city."

Monahan added: "We've had five days of war here, that needs to end. It has to end today."

He told peaceful protestors to go home when the sun goes down.

"Leave it out to those who are to cause damage and we'll get rid of them," he said. "We'll get rid of those that are ruining your neighborhood."

Protests erupted across multiple cities after the death of Floyd last week. A video circulated showing Floyd become unresponsive as ex-officer Derek Chauvin kept his knee to Floyd's neck. All four officers involved in the incident were fired, and Chauvin has been arrested and charged. Protestors are calling for the other three officers to be charged.