by Thaddeus G. McCotter
In Washington, D.C.’s Lafayette Square during the Left’s latest attempt to create “Year Zero” by erasing American history, the less-than-peaceful protestors endeavored to create a “Black House Autonomous Zone” (BHAZ). As is their destructive wont, they defaced St. John’s Episcopal Church and a statue of President Andrew Jackson. Before they could topple the statue of Jackson, however, D.C. police intervened and, using pepper spray and other tactics, pushed the crowd back.
The statue is safe for now; and some protestors should become quickly acquainted with the Veterans Memorial Preservation and Recognition Act which, as Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) was kind enough to remind these “criminal masterminds,” carries a 10-year sentence for destroying a statue of a veteran on federal property. In his own tweet, President Donald Trump also cited this federal law and urged the vandals to “Beware!”
Should these lawless desecrators demur, the president later tweeted that he has
authorized the Federal Government to arrest anyone who vandalizes or destroys any monument, statue or other such Federal property in the U.S. with up to 10 years in prison, per the Veteran’s Memorial Preservation Act, or such other laws that may be pertinent… This action is taken effective immediately, but may also be used retroactively for destruction or vandalism already caused. There will be no exceptions!
Clearly, the president’s message comes not only in response to the vandals, but also in response to the president’s populist critics who have chided him for appearing weak in the face of the lawlessness. These populist critics may not find the president’s actions to be enough, for he is not sending in the federal troops to put an end to the disorder.
Understandably disgusted by the vandals’ ahistorical Philistinism, these populists ought to look beyond this latest attack on America’s rule of law and legacy, and view the protestors’ effort to establish a BHAZ outside the gates of the White House in a larger strategic context. Kurt Schlichter has done precisely that:
Not doing what the enemy wants is not ‘not doing anything . . . ’ I want to win. Not just the election, though we must win that. I want to win the whole cultural war and burn Marxism to the ground. And doing that means cold calculated ruthlessness, not mindless reaction to jerks trying to get our eyes off the prize.
It is no coincidence the Left tried to create the BHAZ at the very time, as Schlichter notes, “Seattle’s garbage mayor [a.k.a., Jenny Durkan] is pulling the plug on the Summer of Love 2.” The president did not send federal troops into Seattle to disperse the CHAZ. That task is finally and rightfully being done by that municipality. Consequently, with the CHAZ imploding under the weight of its own violent inanity into a national laughing stock, the Left returned to Lafayette Square to try to incite a more direct confrontation with President Trump.
The Left wants our legacy and social media littered with propaganda they can use to project their own chaos and violence onto President Trump and his supporters. Instead, in the nascent BHAZ, the municipal jurisdiction of Washington, D.C. dispersed the disorderly—not federal troops. Once more, a president not known for restraint showed it; and refused to give the Left what it wanted—the manufacture of chaos and violence they and their media enablers and abettors could weaponize to attack Trump.
The Left’s reason for wanting to provoke Trump is obvious every time Joe Biden escapes his basement, virtually or physically. The Left knows it has to hide and carry an historically weak nominee to victory. Hence, it isn’t just the protests and riots, it is everything the lawless Left is doing across the spectrum of American life. All of these things are done to distract the electorate, prevent the coming presidential election from being a choice between two candidates, and turn it instead into a referendum on President Trump.
Kurt Schlichter knows it. And President Trump knows it: “[Where the disorders occur] All of these places are run by Democrats . . . They don’t know what they’re doing. And if Biden got in, this country would be a disaster.”
Every time the president attacks Biden, Trump is trying to make the coming election a choice; every time populists attack Trump for being weak they unwittingly abet the Left’s attempt to make the coming election a referendum on the president. Like Kurt Schlichter, I want to win. I suggest the populists cease and desist abetting the Left.
I do have one caveat: I might change my mind if the vandals build an autonomous zone outside Biden’s basement.
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The Hon. Thaddeus McCotter is the former chairman of the Republican House Policy Committee, current itinerant guitarist, American Greatness contributor, and Monday co-host of the “John Batchelor Show.”
