U.S. Attorney General William Barr has spent much of the last week defending his call to clear protesters outside the White House on June 1, which ultimately resulted in law enforcement tear-gassing and using force against peaceful protesters, seemingly so that President Donald Trump could hold a photo-op. The attorney general has pointed to the destructive protests that took place the weekend prior to justify the decision, saying Thursday that clearing protesters was necessary to protect against the “very serious rioting” that had taken place in the days before. In an interview Monday with Fox News’ Brett Baier, Barr doubled down on his defense when asked if he would do anything differently in retrospect, given the widespread criticism over the protesters’ forcible removal. “Based on what I know now, no,” Barr responded—before going on to throw his boss under the bus in an attempt to rationalize the move.
Barr once again claimed Monday that the violence of the weekend protests was what necessitated clearing the protesters, rather than the president’s subsequent photo op. “We were reacting to three days of extremely violent demonstrations right across from the White House,” Barr told Baier. “A lot of injuries to police officers, arson.” To emphasize his point about the weekend unrest, Barr highlighted a telling example, explaining to Baier that “things were so bad that the Secret Service recommended the president go down to the bunker.” “We can’t have that in our country,” Barr said. That bunker claim, of course, comes as no surprise, given that it reflects what reporting of that weekend’s events had already confirmed. The New York Times and other outlets reported at the time that the Secret Service whisked the president, along with First Lady Melania Trump and son Barron, to the White House bunker Friday evening for about an hour, as protests near the White House intensified.
But Barr directly contradicted Trump’s preferred narrative of the events, in which he wasn’t a scared president hiding out from his constituents—but instead just so happened to decide that this was a convenient time to give the bunker a routine inspection. Trump told Fox’s Brian Kilmeade Wednesday that the news of his bunker hide-out was a “false report,” claiming that he “was there for a tiny little short period of time, and it was much more for an inspection.” “They said it would be a good time to go down, take a look, because maybe some time you’re going to need it,” Trump said, claiming he had gone to the bunker “two or three times, all for inspection.” (The attorney general did otherwise stand by his boss during the Fox News interview, defending Trump’s much-maligned Bible photo shoot and saying he “[doesn’t] see anything with the president walking out to the church” to take photos after protesters were forcibly cleared.)
The news of Trump’s trip to the bunker—which the Times noted “has not been used much, if at all” since former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were sent there after the September 11 attacks—has clearly become a particular sore spot for the president, who has tried to use the nationwide protests over racial injustice and George Floyd’s killing to cast himself as a tough “law and order” president, instead of the kind who would retreat to a bunker in times of strife. CNN reported that the president’s disastrous photo-op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church after the protesters were cleared was cooked up because the president was frustrated by the bunker reports and wanted to be seen outside the White House, and the president has repeatedly encouraged the use of force against protesters in an attempt to demonstrate a “strong” response. But as his cratering poll numbers suggest, Trump’s strongman rhetoric isn’t working. Despite Trump’s attempts to control the narrative, critics have held up the bunker visit—and the makeshift wall set up around the White House to keep protesters away—as clear symbols of the president’s navel-gazing response to the nationwide unrest, which has prioritized his own image and reelection chances while ignoring the root issues of systemic racism and police brutality that have inspired thousands of Americans to take to the streets. Trump “has no idea the depth of the pain that so many people are still enduring. He remains completely indifferent to the human toll of his indifference,” former Vice President and 2020 rival Joe Biden said Friday. “It’s time for him to step out of his own bunker, take a look around at the consequences of his words and his actions.”
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