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'Boot-Licking Trump Sycophant' Youngkin Dodges Question on National Guard Threat
"This is the textbook definition of 'gaslighting' by Glenn Youngkin," said a progressive Virginia organization.
Oct 15, 2024
The Virginia Democratic Party said Tuesday that Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin—long promoted in the political press as a "moderate" alternative to the far-right MAGA movement—had made clear he was a "disgrace to our commonwealth" in an interview regarding GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump's recent threat to deploy the U.S. military against his political opponents.
CNN anchor Jake Tapper on Monday evening confronted the governor with Trump's comments in an interview broadcast on Sunday in which the former president told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo that he was concerned about violence from "the enemy within" on Election Day.
"We have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics," Trump said in a clip played by Tapper on CNN. "And it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military."
He later pointed to U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who helped lead the prosecution during Trump's first impeachment trial, as one of the "lunatics that we have inside."
"Is that something that you support?" Tapper asked Youngkin.
Youngkin repeatedly dodged Tapper's direct question, instead focusing on immigration and claiming the CNN anchor was "misinterpreting and misrepresenting" Trump's words, which he said were related to the former president's views on undocumented immigrants.
"I'm literally reading his quotes," said Tapper. "I'm literally reading his quotes to you and I played them earlier so you could hear that they were not made up by me."
The governor didn't budge from his message, repeatedly claiming that Tapper had taken "little snippets" from what Trump had said and created "a big narrative" out of the comments. He did not answer Tapper's question about whether he would support deploying the National Guard on Election Day.
"This is the textbook definition of 'gaslighting' by Glenn Youngkin... Insane. And EVIL," said progressive Virginia-based news outlet Blue Virginia. "Youngkin is an eternal disgrace to Virginia—worst governor ever, betrayer of our democracy, boot-licking Trump sycophant."
Independent journalist Eric Michael Garcia said the interview presented the latest evidence that Youngkin—who rose to his state's highest office after campaigning against the teaching of accurate U.S. history, including the history of racial injustice, in public schools—is not the "upbeat Post-Trump alternative" his supporters claim he is.
The interview aired around the time that Mark Esper, Trump's former defense secretary, urged CNN viewers to take seriously the GOP presidential nominee's threat to deploy the military on Election Day.
"I saw over the summer of 2020 where President Trump and those around him wanted to use the National Guard in various capacities in cities such as Chicago and Portland and Seattle," Esper told CNN's Kaitlan Collins, referring to Trump's response when the police killing of George Floyd sparked racial justice protests. "So that's what equally concerns me about his comment would be the use of the military in these types of things."
At a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin on Monday, Democratic vice presidential nominee Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota also addressed Trump's threat, telling the audience, "He's talking about you."
"We'll let the lawyers decide if what he said was treason, but what I know is it's a call for violence, plain and simple," said Walz. "If anyone wants to pretend that this is a normal conversation that Donald Trump is having, just dispel that."
After Youngkin refused to say that as a governor, he would oppose mobilizing the military against Trump opponents, progressive strategist Murshed Zaheed said that "every reporter should be asking every Republican governor whether they will call the National Guard to help Trump target his enemies."
"Would love to get answers to this question from governors of Georgia, Nevada, Ohio, etc.," he said, referring to several battleground states.
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Trump Wanted to Shoot Protesters, Says His Former Pentagon Chief
Mark Esper claims in a new book that the former president asked: "Can't you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?"
May 02, 2022
Former President Donald Trump suggested protesters in Washington, D.C. denouncing police brutality back in the spring of 2020 should be shot, according to former Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
The revelation scooped by Axios Monday comes in Esper's memoir--A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times--to be released May 10.
Referencing the protesters outside the White House the first week of June 2020, Trump asked: "Can't you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?"
The moment inside the Oval Office was "surreal," writes Esper, who describes Trump as "red faced and complaining loudly about the protests under way in Washington, D.C."
Esper writes that he wanted to "figure out a way to walk Trump back without creating the mess I was trying to avoid."
The allegation in Esper's memoir mirrors one laid out last year in then-Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender's book Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost.
"Crack their skulls!" Trump told his top law enforcement and military officials as to how to respond to the June 2020 protesters, according to Bender's book.
"Just shoot them," Trump reportedly said multiple times in the Oval Office, Bender's book charges. Then, after pushback from then-Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and then-Attorney General William Barr, Trump said, "Well, shoot them in the leg--or maybe the foot."
At the start of June 2020, Trump publicly threatened to use the Insurrection Act of 1807 to deploy the military to U.S. cities to suppress nationwide demonstrations over the police killing of George Floyd.
"If a city or state refuses to take the actions necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them," said Trump.
Days later, Esper rebuffed the then-president's call, saying at a Pentagon press briefing that "the option to use active-duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations."
"We are not in one of those situations now," he said. "I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act."
Five months later, Trump fired Esper, announcing the news in a tweet.
Esper, NPR reported at the time, had "earned the derogatory nickname 'Yesper' for seemingly acquiescing or remaining silent over the president's kneejerk moves. Those ranged from reducing U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Syria with little or no deliberation to stopping Pentagon efforts to rename military bases named after Confederate generals."
The ex-defense chief, however, has rejected the characterization.
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What Did William Barr Know and When Did He Know It?
For two years, Barr developed false narratives that protected then-President Donald Trump from incriminating facts.
Mar 07, 2022
"We live in the age of narrative, not facts," former Attorney General William Barr told NBC News in an interview that aired on March 6, 2022.
He should know. For two years, Barr developed false narratives that protected then-President Donald Trump from incriminating facts, starting with a "distorted" and "misleading" summary of special counsel Robert Mueller's report. Barr diverted the public from Mueller's conclusions that Russia committed crimes to help Trump win the 2016 election, Trump's campaign had embraced the assistance, and Trump himself had obstructed justice during the ensuing investigation.
But now that Trump is at the center of a potential criminal conspiracy to remain in office after losing the election, Barr is promoting his new book and launching a new narrative.
And this time, he's trying to protect himself.
I have a few questions.
Why Did Barr Stop Pushing Trump's Big Lie?
Prior to the election, Barr repeatedly pushed Trump's lie that fraud could infect the outcome. He was still at it on November 9, 2020, when he reversed the Justice Department's longstanding hands-off policy surrounding elections and ordered an investigation into allegations of voting irregularities that, "if true, could potentially impact the outcome a federal election in an individual State."
According to former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen's August 7, 2021 interview with the House committee investigating the January 6 attack, Barr "had been considering it earlier." But for some reason, he decided to announce the policy change two days after every news organization had confirmed Trump's defeat. The head of the Justice Department's Election Crimes Branch resigned from that position in protest.
On the same day and in a seemingly unrelated development, Trump fired Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and appointed Christopher C. Miller as acting secretary. Immediately, Miller replaced three top department officials and named three Trump loyalists to replace them:
- New chief of staff to the secretary of defense: Kash Patel, former aide to former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).
- New acting undersecretary of defense for policy: Retired army Gen. Anthony Tata, a pro-Trump Fox News pundit.
- And, perhaps most significantly, new acting undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security: Ezra Cohen-Watnick, former assistant to Trump's first national security adviser, confessed felon, and election-conspiracy promoter, Mike Flynn.
Then in a recently revealed mid- to late-November meeting, Trump told Barr that his lawyers said the Justice Department could seize voting machines. Barr rejected the idea. But did he hear that Trump kept exploring the possibility with other federal agencies, including the Defense Department?
Shortly thereafter, Barr abruptly turned on Trump and renounced the Big Lie publicly. On December 1, he told the Associated Press that there was no evidence of voter fraud sufficient to change the election outcome.
Nine days later, Trump signed an executive order revising the Defense Department's line of succession. He moved up his newest departmental loyalists--Tata and Cohen-Watnick--and put them directly behind the deputy secretary and the secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. It meant that if Trump issued an order that the Pentagon's top four leaders refused to obey, the resulting departmental massacre would leave friendly faces in their stead.
What Did Barr Know about Trump's Phony Electors?
Trump tried to reverse his defeat in key states by litigating popular vote totals and contacting election officials. Many of those efforts were in plain sight at the time, and all of them failed. But recently we learned that Trump's allies were working secretly on another ploy.
On December 9, Boston attorney Kenneth Chesebro--whom the House's January committee subpoenaed on March 1, 2022--outlined a plan to press ahead with Trump's potential electors in six states that he had lost. Their combined electoral votes would swing the Electoral College outcome to Trump.
In accordance with the U.S. Constitution and federal law, the Electoral College voted on December 14 in state capitals throughout the country. Previously chosen electors for each state's winning candidate cast their ballots accordingly and transmitted them to federal officials, including the National Archives.
But in seven states that Biden won--the six states in Chesebro's memo plus New Mexico--Trump's potential electors pretended that Trump had won. They signed phony voting certificates that are now the subject of criminal investigations. Identically prepared as to font and format, the certificates falsely declared Trump the official winner in those states. One of Trump's illegitimate electors from Michigan later said that the request for the false certificates had come from the Trump campaign.
What Did Barr Know about the Defense Department's Involvement?
December 14 was an eventful day:
- The Electoral College voted to confirm Biden's victory.
- Barr resigned effective December 23.
- Trump named Jeffrey Rosen as acting Attorney General.
- And Trump's White House assistant sent Rosen an email ("From: POTUS") that pushed repeatedly debunked claims about voting machines in Antrim County, Michigan.
The following day, Rosen and others met in the Oval Office and told Trump that the Antrim County claims were false. Immediately afterward, Rosen briefed Barr on the session.
"Thanks for the update," Barr responded.
A recently revealed draft executive order dated December 16, 2020, ties together various election-subversion strands. Based on the lies about Antrim County, the order empowered the newly reworked Defense Department to seize voting machines, federalize the National Guard, and prepare an assessment of the situation within 60 days--nearly a month past the January 20 Inauguration Day set forth in the Constitution. The order also appointed a special counsel to investigate voter fraud.
On December 17, Secretary Miller ordered a cessation of transition team meetings between the Defense Department and President-elect Biden's team.
On December 18, an aide to Trump adviser Peter Navarro escorted Mike Flynn and attorney Sidney Powell into the Oval Office where they urged Trump to sign the draft executive order. Other advisers, including Rudy Giuliani, pushed back. So Trump told Giuliani to ask acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II if his agency could seize voting machines. Cuccinelli said no.
Still, early on December 21, Navarro appeared on Fox News, proposing that the federal government "seize a lot of those voting machines" and appoint a special counsel before Inauguration Day to investigate. Shortly thereafter, Barr responded to a reporter's question, saying that he saw no basis for either step.
On December 23, Barr left office.
Less than three weeks later, a remarkable bipartisan op-ed appeared in the Washington Post. Evidently inspired by former Vice President Dick Cheney, who had served as secretary of defense for President George H.W. Bush when Barr was attorney general the first time, it issued a stark warning from all 10 living former secretaries of defense to leaders of the armed forces:
"Each of us swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We did not swear it to an individual or a party...
"Efforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory. Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic."
The following day, Trump moved forcefully in a different direction. Along with Chapman University law professor John Eastman, he urged Pence to proceed with the final phase of the phony-electors plot. They wanted Pence to use the false certifications as a pretext to ignore the electoral votes that Biden had won in those seven states.
On the morning of January 6, Pence rejected the plan. The insurrection followed.
William Barr was the nation's top law enforcement officer--twice. He too had sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution. We now know that after the election and before Barr left office, nefarious plots to undermine democracy swirled throughout the Trump administration. He quashed at least one himself.
What did Barr know and when did he know it?
Before he answers, put him under oath.
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