AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
By now you’ve heard a number of reports claiming that
tear gas was used against “peaceful protesters” to clear the area around the
White House so that President Trump could “get his photo op” at the historic
St. John’s Episcopal Church, which had been burned in the riots the night
before. Trump had just told the country he would restore the rule of law, which
the left and the media think is just a dog-whistle for fascism, and set out to
turn his symbolic act of walking through Lafayette Park to the church and
holding up a Bible into a Trump-is-literally-Hitler moment. In fact, a doctored
photo of Hitler holding a Bible the same way Trump did had gone viral even though it
was completely fabricated.
After protesters were moved from the area, the narrative
quickly spread that “peaceful” protesters were tear-gassed in order to get them
to move.
Reuters claims the following video shows U.S. Park Police
(USPP) using tear gas on protesters:
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U.S. Park Police fired
tear gas on protesters gathered outside the White House to demonstrate against
police brutality in the wake of George Floyd's death
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The police aren’t even wearing gas masks. All major media
outlets nevertheless reported that tear gas was used, without provocation,
against peaceful protesters.
NPR claimed,
“The plaza between St. John’s Church and Lafayette Park was full of people
nonviolently protesting police brutality late Monday afternoon when U.S. Park
Police and National Guard troops, with the use of tear gas, suddenly started
pushing them away for no apparent reason.” The only photo they show of police
gathering to remove protesters once again shows none are wearing gas masks,
which would seem necessary to protect themselves from tear gas.
The New
York Times, Washington
Post, MSNBC, ABC News, and
many other outlets, reporters, and pundits peddled the claim that peaceful
protesters were tear-gassed without provocation to clear the area for Trump.
Democrats like Hillary
Clinton, Elizabeth Warren,
and Joe
Biden also chimed in, repeating the claim.
But United States Park Police acting Chief Gregory T.
Monahan said
the following in a statement:
The
United States Park Police (USPP) is committed to the peaceful expression of
First Amendment rights. However, this past weekend’s demonstrations at
Lafayette Park and across the National Mall included activities that were not
part of a peaceful protest, which resulted in injuries to USPP officers in the
line of duty, the destruction of public property and the defacing of memorials
and monuments. During four days of demonstrations, 51 members of the USPP were
injured; of those, 11 were transported to the hospital and released and three
were admitted.
Multiple
agencies assisted the USPP in responding to and quelling the acts of
destruction and violence over the course of the weekend in order to protect
citizens and property.
On
Monday, June 1, the USPP worked with the United States Secret Service to have
temporary fencing installed inside Lafayette Park. At approximately 6:33
pm, violent protestors on H Street NW began throwing projectiles including
bricks, frozen water bottles and caustic liquids. The protestors also climbed
onto a historic building at the north end of Lafayette Park that was destroyed
by arson days prior. Intelligence had revealed calls for violence against the
police, and officers found caches of glass bottles, baseball bats and metal
poles hidden along the street.
To
curtail the violence that was underway, the USPP, following established policy,
issued three warnings over a loudspeaker to alert demonstrators on H Street to
evacuate the area. Horse mounted patrol, Civil Disturbance Units and additional
personnel were used to clear the area. As many of the protestors became more combative,
continued to throw projectiles, and attempted to grab officers’ weapons,
officers then employed the use of smoke canisters and pepper balls. No tear gas
was used by USPP officers or other assisting law enforcement partners to close
the area at Lafayette Park. Subsequently, the fence was installed.
According to the USPP, there were acts of violence by the
protesters, which means they weren’t peaceful. Peaceful protests don’t result
in the destruction of property, vandalism, or USPP officers being injured.
Unfortunately, the media jumped on the story, allowing it
to spread before the facts came out. Photos should have made it clear that
traditional tear gas was not used because photos and video of law enforcement
show most are simply wearing face guards, which would not protect them from
tear gas. Rather, they used pepper balls and smoke canisters.
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Heavily armed federal
officers fired gas canisters at a crowd of nonviolent demonstrators outside the
White House. 'This was a peaceful protest,' CNN analyst Jackie Kucinich wrote.
'And they are using tear gas. In the United States. In front of the White House.'
---
Further, using traditional tear gas, a powerful chemical
irritant, in an area that the president of the United States would soon be
walking through doesn’t make a lot of sense now, does it?
“It’s said that a lie can get halfway around the world
before the truth can get its pants on,” said Tim Murtaugh, the Trump 2020
communications director in response to the USPP statement. “This tear gas lie
is proof of that. For nearly an entire day, the whole of the press corps
frantically reported the ‘news’ of a tear gas attack on ‘peaceful’ protestors
in Lafayette Park, with no evidence to support such claims. We now know through
the U.S. Park Police that neither they, nor any of their law enforcement
partners, used tear gas to quell rising violence.”
But the Washington Post disputes
the notion that tear gas wasn’t used:
The
truth boils down to an exercise in semantics.
According
to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: “Riot control agents
(sometimes referred to as “tear gas”) are chemical compounds that temporarily
make people unable to function by causing irritation to the eyes, mouth,
throat, lungs, and skin.”
And,
according to the CDC, “several different compounds” fall under this definition,
and are employed by security forces, including military and police, in riot
control situations.
Among others, they include chloroacetophenone (CN), more commonly referred to as “mace,” or pepper sprays — in other words, the compound that was deployed in Lafayette Square — and chlorobenzylidenemalononitrile (CS), “one of the most commonly used tear gases in the world,” according to an article in the British Medical Journal.
But as Neal Augenstein of WTOP radio in Washington D.C.
noted, smoke canisters, which the USPP acknowledges were deployed, “don’t have
an uncomfortable irritant in them.”
The USPP did acknowledge that pepper balls were used
after protesters started throwing projectiles, and those do have a chemical
irritant in them. A
senior defense official also said that National Guard troops who
assisted in clearing the protesters did not have tear gas or rubber bullets.
“The National Guard forces do not have tear gas, do not have rubber bullets, so
they did not do any of the firing,” the official said.
While there is some discussion about whether pepper balls
are considered tear gas, it seems indisputable that the protesters were not as
peaceful as the media wants to portray them.
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Matt Margolis is the author of Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us
From Barack Obama’s Legacy and the bestselling book The
Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow
Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis