President Donald J. Trump participates at a roundtable on donating plasma Thursday, July 30, 2020, at the American Red Cross-National Headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour)
The Democratic National Convention is less than two weeks away, but more than 100 local police departments have withdrawn offers to send police officers to help. You see, reports William McGurn in the WSJ, Milwaukee has placed restrictions on police: the city elites are banning the use of tear gas and pepper spray to control crowds.
It could prove embarrassing: Will Democrats really want to be seen calling on the feds to protect them after so many Democratic pols have equated them with stormtroopers and the Gestapo?
Death Comes to “a Summer of Love”
“Protesters” in Seattle declared a six-block area neighborhood an autonomous zone. The Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, or CHOP, was complete with barricades as well as CHOP’s own armed security. Local and national press accounts described it as a “street festival” and “Mayor Jenny Durkan treated it as a lark,” continues Mr. McGurn. Ms. Durkan called it “a summer of love.”
(When) Durkan issued her executive order to shut down CHOP, it took only a single morning to carry it out—which suggest that what had been missing was a lack of will.
It invites a hard question: If the mayor had shown some resolve earlier, might those two African-American teens still be alive?
Elected Officials Wink at Chaos
With his interventions the president is telling city residents that there’s nothing inevitable about the rising shootings and mayhem that plague their communities. They are the result of the choice made by too many public officials to wink at chaos. Which may be why the same pols so unwilling to act themselves denounce the federal law-enforcement officers dispatched to help in language far nastier than anything they say about the rioters assaulting people and property.
As the incumbent, Mr. Trump needs to make good on his promise of restoring order or risk looking weak and incapable. The best way to do that is to make clear that the ultimate goal of his federal interventions is both modest and effective, by doing what he’s now done in Portland—getting mayors and governors to do their jobs.
