The anti-Trump Republicans behind The Lincoln Project have released another hard-hitting ad hammering President Donald Trump for his failures in office. The new ad outlines Trump’s dictatorial response to days of nationwide protests against police brutality, which the president has lashed out against. He’s insisted upon using more police brutality against the demonstrators, and he’s already apparently dispatched members of the military into the streets of Washington, D.C., itself to harass peaceful protesters whose cause he happens not to care for. As the ad outlines, the streets of D.C. have been turned into a de facto “war zone” on behalf of the “coward” president.
DC tonight is the most militarized city I’ve ever seen in my life.
I could see police cars & military vehicles from every block over a 20 block radius.
Park Police, National Guard, CBP, DC Police, Secret Service & DEA were are all out in humvees, tanks, helicopters & horses.
— Arjun Sethi (@arjunsethi81) June 2, 2020
In the new ad, a narrator states:
‘When Donald Trump came out of hiding this week, he didn’t do it to bring us together or heal the nation. He wasn’t there to offer words of calm and comfort. Instead, he became what we always feared, evoked the worst of our past, threatened our governors and states. He ordered our own soldiers, who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, to flood the streets, instructing them to turn against Americans, used churches and the holy Bible as political props. He didn’t invoke the lord to give us wisdom but to boost his polls.’
After Donald Trump threatens to send in the army to crush protests, the head of the US military reminds those in uniform that their oath is not to protect Trump but the Constitution. It speaks volumes that he issued such a statement pic.twitter.com/mOccKvkvz2
— Jonathan Freedland (@Freedland) June 4, 2020
The narrator goes on to fault Trump for having “ordered an attack on peaceful protesters using gas, rubber bullets, and flash grenades.” The incident that they’re referencing unfolded in Lafayette Park outside of the White House recently, when cops attacked peaceful protesters, whose demonstration was entirely legal, for the sole purpose of clearing a path for Trump to hold a photo op at a local church. That photo op unfolded after Trump delivered a brief speech outside the White House, in which he threatened to send the military into states if local authorities didn’t get local, largely peaceful demonstrations under control.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill.: "Threatening military force and imprisonment against Americans exercising their Constitutional rights is not Presidential, it's tin-pot dictatorial."https://t.co/gedVgvGVjr
— NPR (@NPR) June 3, 2020
The narrator concludes:
‘Washington transformed into a war zone for this coward. This is a time for choosing: America or Trump.’
Check out the ad below:
Trump’s inane sensitivity to attacks on his public image isn’t exactly a secret, so if he hears about this ad, an inane Twitter rant from the president trying to discredit those behind the project would not be out of the question. He’s already lashed out against The Lincoln Project in the past. After the group released an ad called “Mourning in America” that outlined Trump’s failures in responding to the Coronavirus, Trump rushed to Twitter to denounce the politicos behind the ad as “losers” — thereby proving the group’s point about his incompetent pettiness and complete unfitness for the office of the presidency. Trump has also repeatedly publicly denigrated conservative lawyer George Conway, who helps lead the organization and whose wife, Kellyanne Conway, is a longtime top Trump adviser.
Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to struggle through Trump’s total absence of leadership. He has failed to offer any kind of systematic proposal for the path ahead for the United States outside of his obsessive concerns with his poll numbers and public image more broadly. He’s more likely to tweet delusionally about “fake news” than he is to offer some kind of leadership.
