'Trump Threat To Unleash Secret Police In US Cities Slammed As Scheme To 'Steal November Election'
AlterNet. By Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams, July 20, 2020. Excerpts, Ed.:
Amid mounting criticism over the deployment of unidentified federal agents to Portland, Oregon—where they have been driving around in unmarked vehicles and snatching people off the streets—civil liberties advocates are increasingly concerned that President Donald Trump will similarly send “secret police” to other Democrat-led cites across the country as part of a 2020 campaign strategy to sow chaos and further his law-and-order message.
“Part of Trump’s reelection strategy is to scare the white suburbs, which polls show have soured on him, with ‘urban’ (read: minority) violence,” University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole wrote Monday for his website Informed Comment. “It now appears clear that part of that strategy is to send federal agents dressed like Iraq War troops to Democratic-run cities, on the pretext of protecting federal property, and then for them to attack and provoke BLM and Defund the Police protesters, causing violence to escalate and using it… to scare the suburbs,” Cole said.
“The exercise also has the advantage for Trump of entrenching a new form of secret police and of turning federal agents into instruments of his authoritarianism.” As Cole noted, WH Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo on Sunday that U.S. AG William Barr and DHC Secy. Chad Wolf are “weighing in on” similar plans for other cities, “and you’ll see something rolled out this week, as we start to go in and make sure that the communities- whether it’s Chicago or Portland or Milwaukee or someplace across the heartland of the country- we need to make sure their communities are safe.” Wolf made clear in a Monday appearance on Fox News that the administration will deploy federal law enforcement with or without the cooperation of local officials. In a Sunday afternoon tweet about Portland and “The Radical Left Democrats, who totally control” presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, Trump name-checked not only Chicago but also NY and Philadelphia.
Sunday, Fox's Chris Wallace asked what he is going to do about shooting deaths in NY & Chicago, Trump said: “I explain it very simply by saying that they’re Democrat-run cities, they are liberally run. They are stupidly run. We have forced them in Seattle to end the CHOP because, you know, we were going in that following day. You probably have heard it. We were getting ready to go in. We were all set, and when they heard that we were going they set their police force.”
The Chicago Tribune reported Monday that (DHS) “is crafting plans to deploy about 150 federal agents” to the city this week. In response to the administration targeting her city, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet wrote Monday that “if Trump sends a Portland-style action to Chicago, it would represent a dramatic escalation between Trump and Mayor Lori Lightfoot regarding how to deal with the city’s ongoing battles against gun violence and demonstrations against racial injustice and police brutality.” Sweet also framed the potential “military-style response” to BLM protests in Chicago sparked by MN police killing of George Floyd as part of the president’s effort to win in November and to show that he is for ‘law and order’ while framing rival Joe Biden as soft on crime and anti-police.”
Robert Reich as well as Democratic Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler made similar observations about the Oregon city last week: "Though both local and state officials have warned that the federal presence in Portland is making the situation worse not better, the Washington Post‘s Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman argued last week that there “is reason to believe that this is exactly what the Trump administration wants.” They wrote: We know Trump wants these scenes to be playing out on people’s TVs in faraway states, such as—to select a few at random—WI, MI, PA, AZ, and FL. And given that his homeland security chief is actively ignoring local officials’ demands that he pull out federal law enforcement—in a manner that those officials say is inflaming the situation—it’s reasonable to surmise that escalation is the whole point of these exercises in the first place.
“Portland may be a dumbshow for dummies, but it also looks like a dress rehearsal,” Esquire columnist Charles Pierce warned. “This is not an ‘authoritarian impulse.’ This is authoritarian government—straight, no chaser. And this administration has a powerful thirst for it. It will do anything if it thinks it can get away with it in order to benefit a president* who wants to bring the Republic down on his head.”...
More, https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/trump-threat-to-unleash-secret-police-in-us-cities-slammed-as-scheme-to-steal-the-november-election/
'Trump Is Trying To Rig The Election Before Our Very Eyes,'
https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/how-trump-is-trying-to-rig-the-election-right-before-our-eyes/
"Here Are 6 Signs Trump May Use DHS Stormtroopers To Stop Democrats From Voting,'
https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/here-are-6-signs-trump-may-use-dhs-stormtroopers-to-stop-democrats-from-voting/
= new reply since forum marked as read
