Trump and Barr Fooled Them All

Trump and Barr Fooled Them All
FBI agents in Washington, D.C., on June 3, 2020. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
Brian Cates
6/12/2020
Updated:
6/14/2020

Commentary

President Donald Trump faced a seemingly insurmountable problem. Again.

After having gone through a fake impeachment, the CCP virus pandemic—which was coupled with a never-before-attempted economic shutdown—the Trump administration was suddenly faced with an escalating series of simultaneous riots in cities across the nation.

Peaceful protests across the country following the death in police custody of a black man named George Floyd in Minneapolis quickly turned into a series of violent nationwide riots.

It turned out much of this rioting seen across America was orchestrated by anarchist groups that are loosely referred to by the name “Antifa.”

Trump and Attorney General William Barr on May 31 announced that the U.S. government would be designating Antifa as a terrorist group and that all federal law enforcement agencies were now coordinating their efforts through the 56 FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces to “identify criminal organizers and instigators.”

While the Democrats and the media anticipated getting the optics they so desperately craved—of Trump sending in soldiers with bayonets fixed, charging at the “peaceful protesters”—what they got instead was the sudden appearance of a bunch of federal tactical units from the FBI, the Secret Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Bureau of Prisons, and other agencies, in full gear, many with no rifles, and certainly no bayonets. 

As the entire nation is about to belatedly discover, federal agents don’t need the permission of governors or mayors before they can enter a state or a city to enforce federal laws and arrest those who are breaking them. 

And it happens to be a federal crime to conduct terror attacks against American communities.

It seems the play among some Democrat governors and mayors was to refuse to call in the National Guard while also making their police departments stand down and give the rioters “space to destroy,” which would cause the situation to become so bad that Trump would be forced to act.

And the action they anticipated the president to take was to seize control from the governors and send in the active-duty military to restore order. That would have allowed them to play their “Trump the Dictator” narrative all the way to the election.

But Trump didn’t do what they expected.

If I could clearly see what the progressive left was attempting to bait Trump into doing from here in South Texas, then of course the president could see this for himself.

So Trump didn’t send the active-duty military in and the left isn’t going to get their desired optics of regular military units chasing down rioters in the streets. 

Just as he did with his CCP virus response, Trump avoided the trap set for him while cutting the Gordian Knot that was presented to him.

Recall that Democrats and the media spent months trying to browbeat this chief executive into seizing control from the Democratic governors and handling the virus response on a federal level. When they weren’t trying to bait him into doing that, they were trying to bait him into nationalizing various key industries.

Trump refused to do that either. 

Instead of doing what they eagerly hoped he would do, Trump’s enemies complained impotently as he forged an unprecedented alliance between federal agencies and private industry, the likes of which had not been seen since World War II. 

While “experts” stroked their chins for TV cameras and opined it would take months, if not years, to solve the four biggest needs—ventilators, virus testing, production of personal protective equipment, and a vaccine—Trump and his handpicked team tackled these problems with innovative creativity. They cut massive amounts of red tape and got results in a matter of days and weeks—not the predicted months and years.

Because Trump had successfully navigated the huge black swan event of a CCP virus pandemic, and as the new jobs report for May demonstrated, he’s also successfully navigated the economic shutdown, Democrats immediately moved to try to turn nationwide rioting to their political advantage. 

But Trump is simply too smart for these people. He sent in the feds, who spent the past week quietly taking down Antifa behind the scenes. And now it’s mostly over.

Once again, they lose, he wins.

Brian Cates is a writer based in South Texas and the author of “Nobody Asked For My Opinion ... But Here It Is Anyway!” He can be reached on Twitter @drawandstrike.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Brian Cates is a former contributor. He is based in South Texas and the author of “Nobody Asked for My Opinion … But Here It Is Anyway!”
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