I’m in LA and I wanna be clear on the chain of events- the ICE raiders began the violence. Men with assault rifles and no name tapes assaulted people on the street with Rodney King levels of force. My totally apolitical wife was weeping because she watched an old man get grabbed and bodyslammed into the pavement for the crime of tottering away from gunman slowly.
THEN protestors met them, implicitly threatening force to make them stop, which then triggered the escalation chain as cops moved to protect ICE and the crowd found burnable cars while eating rubber bullets.
There was NOTHING happening before the raiders attacked.
I ain’t no anarchist, now. ICE is a law enforcement agency with ownership of illegal immigrants, ack. But when you BEGIN with overwhelming force and prioritize volume of arrests over due process, you are the tyrants that the second amendment was written for. Had they warrants and LEO uniforms with visible badges on and the reputation for granting every detainee a trial to prove they’re here illegally before taking action, they hold some moral high ground. Until then, they’re going to trigger violent protest, if only from the guys they’re trying to arrest.
Yeah, as an Angeleno I think you’re way off base here, Jeff. Plain clothes agents are trying to abduct first graders from school, and news reporters are getting purposefully shot with rubber bullets. This really, really isn’t a problem caused (or even exacerbated) by burning Waymo’s. The federal government is both causing the problems and escalating them.
No, but i think he’s right in the sense that the centering of a jackass burning a Waymo gives the average middle American viewer the wrong idea about what the protesters stand for. It’s not “should we enforce our laws or let mobs waving Mexican flags burn down our cities” - which is how it’s currently being portrayed.
I guess I’m personally disappointed that Jeff (one of my favorite writers) is another person choosing to center property destruction and optics in his analysis. This entire situation was caused by presidential actions in the specific hope that enough destruction would happen to justify military force. I’m watching up close and it’s driving me insane to see people treat it like some casual lefty protest movement.
Yeah, I think I see what you’re saying. That’s fair. Jeff’s analysis treats the events as just another protest against Trump that was unfortunately hijacked by idiots, when instead we should recognize that there is an important difference here: the feds came looking for an excuse to start violence, and created one. Is that right?
Illegals are subject to expedited removal, it’s been law since Clinton. But please keep going on about the due process rights of non citizen illegal aliens
Burning Lithium-Ion batteries pump out huge amounts of extremely toxic shit. I guess the protesters did not engage an independent environmental review to direct their activities.
That’s the solution - no protests without submitting multiple studies about how many cars you intend to burn and how many freeways you intend to block. Then some rich homeowners (with Sierra Club signing on) sue to say no, those studies aren’t right, do more. Then seven years later, CEQA finally rules in favor of the protestors, but by then they’ve forgotten what the protest was about, and went on to get jobs in something. Maybe environmental law. Millions spent to no end.
Bureaucracy in the way of productivity is bad. Bureaucracy in the way of nonsense is good. We can even get the bureaucrats to support it because we protected their jobs!
Let's formalize the rubric for describing these occurrences:
If the actors are anti-Trump, say: mostly peaceful, demonstrators, protesters, language of the oppressed, a few burning cars who cares, cops are agents of oppression, exacerbated by Trump, why do you even care so much?
If the actors are pro-Trump, say: violent, rioters, insurrectionists, white rage, the worst day in the history of the republic, anti-law enforcement, exacerbated by Trump, greatest threat to our democracy.
Blocking the interstate is illegal, I'm pretty damn sure. Tell me this isn't controversial? (Alright, if you block the interstate with trucks, under police supervision, that's a rolling roadblock, and technically legal. This ain't that).
Children escaping concentration camps being set upon with dogs for the crime of escaping from detention? (Australia)
Enacting Martial Law over honking? (Canada)
The left believes that it is immoral for the right to actively patrol our borders, and prevent slaves from illegally entering our country (you can listen to them, they'll go on about how people will die from heat exhaustion).
Because yes, I'll admit I don't know how left-wing media would have covered BLM activists breaking into the Capitol to stop the certification of an election at the encouragement of a president who later pardoned them. Maybe journalists would have gone easier, I don't know.
I think (hope) that the op’s point is not that the media should have called 1/6 “mostly peaceful” but that they continually embarrass themselves by downplaying, justifying and rationalizing unacceptable violence from leftist groups
Yeah, this is why I say "overstated" and not "made up".
If it were just about the media being slower to call leftists rioters, that would be one thing.
But the post cites the use of phrases like "insurrection" and "threat to our democracy" as examples of double standards, as though there are all sorts of things left-wing protesters do that could be described as such if the media were not so biased against conservatives.
Every time Trump does some horrible thing, the defense is usually to find some thematically similar thing liberals did to make it seem normal, and I refuse to let that happen with 1/6.
Don’t take this as an intent-never-matters argument, but in our times, his way of commenting tends to escalate pretty quickly into people saying things like that over and over again and the meaning being more the kind of thing you are hoping he doesn’t mean.
I know that you’re being coy with the “can you guess why I don’t know that” line, but of course you know, because you’re not stupid, how the media would have covered it if BLM had breached the Capitol in the aftermath of a Biden loss in the 2020 election and an unarmed mostly-peaceful protester had been shot and killed there by a cop.
Just like I know (even though, as with your Jan. 6 example, it requires counterfactual speculation on my part) what they would have said if pro-Trumpers had been the ones who burned police stations, stormed multiple state capitals to disrupt legislative processes over laws they didn’t like, attacked federal courthouses and other government facilities, attempted to assassinate Kamala Harris twice, violently interfered with the function of government agencies that are enforcing the law of the land because they don’t like the laws being enforced, destroyed property because it was made by a company owned by someone they don’t like, made a hero of the murderer of a ceo from an industry they don’t like, and took over sections of American cities and declared themselves the sole authorities as conditions there crumbled into anarchy.
If disruption of the government through political violence was insurrection on Jan. 6, disruption of the government through political violence is insurrection on every other day as well. If not, forget the rubric about descriptive language. The principle can just be reduced to “Political violence is good when we do it and bad when they do it.”
Here's what you're ignoring: when Trump's supporters do bad things, they're done either at the behest of, or with the explicit endorsement of, Donald Trump.
Trump didn't “exacerbate” Jan 6th. He exhorted his followers to show up, demanded they be allowed through checkpoints with metal detectors, then told them to march on the Capital and that he would be there with them (he lied, obviously), with one little throwaway word of CYA tossed in at the end to placate his apologists. He then sat back and gleefully watched, doing nothing to stop them, and after they were all prosecuted, he pardoned all of them once assuming power.
This is what makes Trump’s supporters different. They act at his behest, often with his explicit imprimatur and support. This is not a “liberal media” double standard. This is a complete false equivalence which refuses to acknowledge the obvious. The people you cite rioting on behalf of left-wing causes don't do so waving pro-Biden/Harris flags—believe it or not, they actually don't much like the Democrats and, unlike the MAGA right, are happy to vote against them for spite—and they don't get a pass from law enforcement or the media, which reports on them like anything else.
You want to claim that these ICE officials are just “enforcing the law”? They're not. Enforcing the law requires acting according to law. It means giving due process. It means obeying court orders. It means not calling in the National Guard when the governor didn't request it, not invoking wartime powers when we aren't at war, and not declaring emergencies for things which represent longstanding problems that the President simply prefers to deal with quickly and with a minimum of resistance.
Good god man, Hegseth is mobilizing the goddamn Marines to go into LA!
The media bends over backward to try and sane-wash Trump and give his reckless, indefensible behavior the benefit of the doubt and some patina of respectability, in a futile attempt to be seen as neutral on matters where no sane person could be. They get bashed by the left constantly for soft-pedaling Trump's outrageous behavior as “unconventional” or talking about his “confrontational style” or saying that his “approach differs” from that of his opponents.
During elections season they flyspecked Harris like a normal candidate yet practically ignored Trump's constant barrage of unhinged rants promising retribution against his political foes. Bezos pulled a WAPO endorsement of Harris after meeting with Trump—after which he had the audacity to lecture us all on perceived media bias. Ditto for the LA Times, whose owner's daughter then tried to run cover by claiming it was over the Gaza war. It was supposed to be about avoiding political bias—or not! Maybe it was for explicitly political reasons that some people will like. Whatever you need to hear, take your pick.
Meanwhile ABC, who caved to settling a ridiculous lawsuit by Trump last year to avoid being in his crosshairs (encouraging Trump to file an even more laughable suit against CBS, quite possibly so that their parent company, Paramount, could hand him a bribe in the form of a settlement to dissuade him from derailing their merger plans), just fired an anchor who'd been with them for 28 years for tweeting about Stephen Miller being a “hateful” person, which is about as close to objective fact as an opinion can get.
So you see, real American media has been quite deferential to Trump lately, arguably to the point of corruption. All while their journalists, who actually do care about truth and informing the public, are forced to bite their tongues and swallow their apprehensions over watching their country sink into authoritarianism. So determined are they to uphold a standard utterly ignored by the massive network of unapologetic right-wing pro-Trump propaganda that have the audacity to refer to themselves as “news”, yet have been repeatedly exposed for blatantly lying to the American public for the sake of profits.
Do you not see the irony of how Jeff is here complaining about the media playing into Trump's hands, while you are claiming that the exact same media are biased shills for the left?
- "Here's what you're ignoring: when Trump's supporters do bad things, they're done either at the behest of, or with the explicit endorsement of, Donald Trump."
I'm not ignoring it, that's exactly what I'm saying. Judgement of political violence is not, in our current information environment, a matter of degree or kind. The question is always Lenin's: who whom. In other words, when they're violent (for Trump), it's bad. When we're violent (against Trump), it's good.
Not just acceptable or forgivable, but GOOD.
- "Do you not see the irony of how Jeff is here complaining about the media playing into Trump's hands, while you are claiming that the exact same media are biased shills for the left?"
No, I don't think that fits the definition of "irony." And I definitely do think that those two things are not at all in opposition. The exact same media are indeed biased shills for the left AND by behaving that way they are indeed playing into Trump's hands. (To get my point here you have to understand that normal people are not the blank-slate sheep of postmodernist fantasy who can continually be reprogrammed by exposure to the latest download of "narrative." People remember the dissonances between what they saw for themselves and what they were told by the media and Democrats in 2020 and are evaluating the current situation in light of that. They're not buying the bullshit this time.)
Those were all bad things. A sitting president inciting a riot to keep himself in power is much worse, in my opinion. And an anchor who agrees with my opinion might use certain words to describe one but not the others.
Maybe you disagree on how I rank these things.
But if we don't allow ourselves to distinguish differences of degree out of fear of looking biased, there is nothing that Trump can't get away with. Trump shoots someone on Fifth Avenue -- "well, what about Luigi Mangione?"
And so I just can't accept downplaying the threat that 1/6 represents with the observation that there perhaps exists an alternate universe where Biden did it and it was covered differently.
In this alternate universe, I would guess that CNN still calls it an insurrection, but maybe mentions it 5,000 times instead of 50,000. And Fox News, as much "the media" as CNN, dedicates their 8 PM slot to the subject for the next ten years. But I don't *know*, you don't know, and there's a reason we both don't know. Because it didn't happen, and I think that matters.
Do you remember when they announced on the news that they took the nuclear codes away from Trump? That's a coup, my dear friend. Not an attempted one, an actual palace coup. Our elected President was removed from his lawful position as Commander in Chief (I do, for the record, support having more than one person make the decision on use of nuclear weapons. This wasn't that.)
We could look at what happened when a mob breached the White House perimeter and the Secret Service put the President into his bunker. Which was to report on it once and then never bring it up again, so people simply don't believe it happened at all.
I, too, believe that taxis are symbols of our democracy, core to our nation's identity, and are the people responsible for leading our country. These situations are perfectly analogous.
The Babylon Bee had it right when they thanked the protesters for standing on a burning car waving the Mexican flag in LA. You couldn't stage a better Republican commercial for the 2028 presidential campaign.
They have and always will hostike invading army. They took what used to be the republican bastion of California and flooded it with Mexicans until it became a one party dem shithole that hundreds of thousands of natives flee every year. That’s the goal everywhere.
18. A president who insists on conducting aggressive ICE operations in a city that plainly wants a lighter touch and who then responds to scattered acts of violence by putting troops in the streets and risking greater confrontation, one might worry, is less interested in ensuring law and order than he is in putting on a show of domination.
19. Such a president will increase these worries when he tweets things like this in response to alleged spitting incidents from the protesters: “‘If they spit, we will hit.’ This is a statement from the President of the United States concerning the catastrophic Gavin Newscum inspired Riots going on in Los Angeles. The Insurrectionists have a tendency to spit in the face of the National Guardsmen/women, and others. These Patriots are told to accept this, it’s just the way life runs. But not in the Trump Administration. IF THEY SPIT, WE WILL HIT, and I promise you they will be hit harder than they have ever been hit before. Such disrespect will not be tolerated!”
20. It takes discipline—extreme discipline—among protesters to deny the president of the United States violence when he’s so clearly itching for it.
21. We should all hope the protesters show more discipline than the president has shown.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. Here are the other seventeen:
1. ICE officers have the legal authority to locate and detain aliens who are in the country unlawfully.
2. Not all lawful exercises of authority are wise, prudent, or smart.
3. Not all lawful exercises of authority are politically popular within communities affected by them.
4. Thus, to say that ICE has the legal authority to detain large numbers of people in Los Angeles is not to say doing so in the face of community opposition is wise, prudent or smart. The presence of community opposition to this law enforcement activity is not surprising.
5. Political demonstrations against ICE operations are a wholly appropriate means of showing community anger and frustration at the administration’s choices of how to deploy law enforcement resources.
6. Throwing rocks, burning Waymo cars, and committing other forms of violence are not legitimate forms of political expression. These are dangerous acts that threaten people’s safety and property. They are also crimes.
7. Not all crimes require a federal response. Normally, people throwing rocks or burning cars in Los Angeles are handled by local authorities, though admittedly, the feds tend to take very seriously attacks on federal officers designed to impede federal law enforcement functions.
8. Not all crimes and situations of lawlessness that do require a federal response require the deployment of the national guard. Most simply require federal investigation and prosecution.
9. Not all situations of lawlessness that do require deployment of the national guard require the deployment of active duty Marines.
10. As a general matter, the deployment of the national guard by the president requires the consent of a state’s governor.
11. Presidential deployment of the national guard over the objection of a governor can lawfully take place only—of relevance here—during actual or threatened rebellion against the United States. (See this excellent piece by Chris Mirasola.)
12. Scattered acts of violence in the course of protests against ICE activities is something less than a rebellion. It is something less than a threatened rebellion.
13. It is also something notably less than a “violent insurrectionist mob,” as the president—who knows a little something about violent, insurrectionist mobs—is very well aware.
14. The deployment of national guard or active duty troops in an American city to put down a rebellion or insurrection that isn’t happening, even if lawful, risks antagonizing people already offended by ICE actions they consider excessive. See points (2), (3), and (4).
15. Such actions sometimes lead to tragic and unnecessary confrontations that give rise to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young songs.
16. Avoiding tragic and unnecessary confrontations is generally desirable.
17. It is thus unwise, imprudent, and stupid to take actions for performative reasons that one might reasonably anticipate would increase the risks of such confrontations
No, however neither did burning the Waymos materially hinder ICE operartions. At best it removed 3 cameras available prosecuting vandalism charges.
It did however provide maga striking visuals to further their propaganda efforts.
Honestly I think the larger tactical error was all the Mexican flags. If it instead was American flags much harder to spin into the foreign invaders narrative.
Of course they'd still try to, but still better to contest the shot than leave the corner three open.
I don’t really disagree with you abstractly, but I think it’s unreasonable to expect any group of hundreds of people to each individually act rationally at all times. Particularly when their community is literally under threat from the military.
On the other hand, we *should* expect the president to act rationally. I know Trump makes that difficult, but IMO this is among the worst things he’s done in office and it looks like he’s just getting started. That should be the headline among people who know better (which Jeff usually does).
I dunno, when we had BLM protests in MY city, the other protestors ATTACKED the guy who was wielding a street sign to bust up a copcar. "That's our police car, with our tax dollars, and we'll be damned if we let you wreck it. We have to pay for the new one!"
They shouted him down and got the idiot to stop.
(These are the "concerned citizens" who show up to talk to the Police when they have a "listen to the citizens" day. They know our policemen, and while they may not always be happy with them, they aren't this Big Unknown Bad Group).
Sorry, I’m with the Waymo-burner on this one. I’ve had it up to here with self-driving taxis deporting American citizens and killing Palestinian children.
"It could turn very volatile if you move law enforcement in there in the wrong way, and turn what is just a bunch of people having fun watching cars burn into a massive confrontation and altercation between officers and demonstrators,"
This was actually said by an ABC News anchor on air. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
"For all that’s been written about media trends, we maybe haven’t talked enough about how the switch from the written word to video has changed news."
Postman was seeing what TV...and by association video...was doing to political and public discourse. He had quite a bit to say about it in "Amusing Ourselves To Death"....mid-80's.
We're a nation addicted to cosplay and spectacle; anything that can be reduced to a TicTok, Reel, Youtube short. That it impacts real people, most of whom just want t olive their lives is incidental.
One thing missing from this analysis is that the reason a self-driving vehicle was burned is because LAPD (and thus presumably the FBI) can access Waymo camera footage and has used it as evidence in prosecutions.
I’m not saying it’s an excuse, I’m saying this is being portrayed as random violence when there is a specific reason for it, and that reason is the police state.
Trump and his evil, cynical minions are dying for their Reichstag Fire moment and think this might be it. Please, protesters, don’t give it to them by spitting, hitting, throwing stuff, and giving yourself a righteous adrenaline rush while playing into Trump’s hands. And ditch the Mexican flags.
Dude, I'm so pumped for you. The other half of a Panera sandwich is way more exciting then anything I have going on today.
I read this while waiting for my leftover mashed potatoes to heat up, so yeah - you go, Maurer!
I’m in LA and I wanna be clear on the chain of events- the ICE raiders began the violence. Men with assault rifles and no name tapes assaulted people on the street with Rodney King levels of force. My totally apolitical wife was weeping because she watched an old man get grabbed and bodyslammed into the pavement for the crime of tottering away from gunman slowly.
THEN protestors met them, implicitly threatening force to make them stop, which then triggered the escalation chain as cops moved to protect ICE and the crowd found burnable cars while eating rubber bullets.
There was NOTHING happening before the raiders attacked.
I ain’t no anarchist, now. ICE is a law enforcement agency with ownership of illegal immigrants, ack. But when you BEGIN with overwhelming force and prioritize volume of arrests over due process, you are the tyrants that the second amendment was written for. Had they warrants and LEO uniforms with visible badges on and the reputation for granting every detainee a trial to prove they’re here illegally before taking action, they hold some moral high ground. Until then, they’re going to trigger violent protest, if only from the guys they’re trying to arrest.
Yeah, as an Angeleno I think you’re way off base here, Jeff. Plain clothes agents are trying to abduct first graders from school, and news reporters are getting purposefully shot with rubber bullets. This really, really isn’t a problem caused (or even exacerbated) by burning Waymo’s. The federal government is both causing the problems and escalating them.
No, but i think he’s right in the sense that the centering of a jackass burning a Waymo gives the average middle American viewer the wrong idea about what the protesters stand for. It’s not “should we enforce our laws or let mobs waving Mexican flags burn down our cities” - which is how it’s currently being portrayed.
I guess I’m personally disappointed that Jeff (one of my favorite writers) is another person choosing to center property destruction and optics in his analysis. This entire situation was caused by presidential actions in the specific hope that enough destruction would happen to justify military force. I’m watching up close and it’s driving me insane to see people treat it like some casual lefty protest movement.
Yeah, I think I see what you’re saying. That’s fair. Jeff’s analysis treats the events as just another protest against Trump that was unfortunately hijacked by idiots, when instead we should recognize that there is an important difference here: the feds came looking for an excuse to start violence, and created one. Is that right?
Yes, pretty much.
This post is literally about how frustrating it is that this happens?
Right. This post is doing exactly what it’s complaining about.
🤔
Illegals are subject to expedited removal, it’s been law since Clinton. But please keep going on about the due process rights of non citizen illegal aliens
Burning Lithium-Ion batteries pump out huge amounts of extremely toxic shit. I guess the protesters did not engage an independent environmental review to direct their activities.
That’s the solution - no protests without submitting multiple studies about how many cars you intend to burn and how many freeways you intend to block. Then some rich homeowners (with Sierra Club signing on) sue to say no, those studies aren’t right, do more. Then seven years later, CEQA finally rules in favor of the protestors, but by then they’ve forgotten what the protest was about, and went on to get jobs in something. Maybe environmental law. Millions spent to no end.
A perfectly California way to stop protests!
I've submitted this to our Board of Directors for review, and we think you would be a perfect fit for our organization.
Bureaucracy in the way of productivity is bad. Bureaucracy in the way of nonsense is good. We can even get the bureaucrats to support it because we protected their jobs!
How could Elon do this
Fuck Elon. I wanna buy direct from the enemy. Xiaomi SU7.
Let's formalize the rubric for describing these occurrences:
If the actors are anti-Trump, say: mostly peaceful, demonstrators, protesters, language of the oppressed, a few burning cars who cares, cops are agents of oppression, exacerbated by Trump, why do you even care so much?
If the actors are pro-Trump, say: violent, rioters, insurrectionists, white rage, the worst day in the history of the republic, anti-law enforcement, exacerbated by Trump, greatest threat to our democracy.
The left thinks that only the left is permitted to protest.
The President, who is not on the left, literally thinks left wing protests are illegal. But keep projecting, we're used to it.
I'll never forget when Trump sent in the tanks down Constitution Avenue to take out the Women's March.
Fricking pink hats everywhere!!!
You seem to think the 2nd term is a replay of the 1st.
No, i just find the left's melodrama tiresome and old hat.
"Melodrama." You're so full of shit.
Blocking the interstate is illegal, I'm pretty damn sure. Tell me this isn't controversial? (Alright, if you block the interstate with trucks, under police supervision, that's a rolling roadblock, and technically legal. This ain't that).
What would be an example of a right-wing protest that the left did not think should be permitted?
Four "Nazis" gathering in the woods of Kentucky.
Haven't heard of this. Weird place to hold a protest.
All of the anti-lockdown protests.
Children escaping concentration camps being set upon with dogs for the crime of escaping from detention? (Australia)
Enacting Martial Law over honking? (Canada)
The left believes that it is immoral for the right to actively patrol our borders, and prevent slaves from illegally entering our country (you can listen to them, they'll go on about how people will die from heat exhaustion).
This strikes me as overstated.
Because yes, I'll admit I don't know how left-wing media would have covered BLM activists breaking into the Capitol to stop the certification of an election at the encouragement of a president who later pardoned them. Maybe journalists would have gone easier, I don't know.
But can you guess why I don't know that?
I think (hope) that the op’s point is not that the media should have called 1/6 “mostly peaceful” but that they continually embarrass themselves by downplaying, justifying and rationalizing unacceptable violence from leftist groups
Yeah, this is why I say "overstated" and not "made up".
If it were just about the media being slower to call leftists rioters, that would be one thing.
But the post cites the use of phrases like "insurrection" and "threat to our democracy" as examples of double standards, as though there are all sorts of things left-wing protesters do that could be described as such if the media were not so biased against conservatives.
Every time Trump does some horrible thing, the defense is usually to find some thematically similar thing liberals did to make it seem normal, and I refuse to let that happen with 1/6.
Don’t take this as an intent-never-matters argument, but in our times, his way of commenting tends to escalate pretty quickly into people saying things like that over and over again and the meaning being more the kind of thing you are hoping he doesn’t mean.
I know that you’re being coy with the “can you guess why I don’t know that” line, but of course you know, because you’re not stupid, how the media would have covered it if BLM had breached the Capitol in the aftermath of a Biden loss in the 2020 election and an unarmed mostly-peaceful protester had been shot and killed there by a cop.
Just like I know (even though, as with your Jan. 6 example, it requires counterfactual speculation on my part) what they would have said if pro-Trumpers had been the ones who burned police stations, stormed multiple state capitals to disrupt legislative processes over laws they didn’t like, attacked federal courthouses and other government facilities, attempted to assassinate Kamala Harris twice, violently interfered with the function of government agencies that are enforcing the law of the land because they don’t like the laws being enforced, destroyed property because it was made by a company owned by someone they don’t like, made a hero of the murderer of a ceo from an industry they don’t like, and took over sections of American cities and declared themselves the sole authorities as conditions there crumbled into anarchy.
If disruption of the government through political violence was insurrection on Jan. 6, disruption of the government through political violence is insurrection on every other day as well. If not, forget the rubric about descriptive language. The principle can just be reduced to “Political violence is good when we do it and bad when they do it.”
Here's what you're ignoring: when Trump's supporters do bad things, they're done either at the behest of, or with the explicit endorsement of, Donald Trump.
Trump didn't “exacerbate” Jan 6th. He exhorted his followers to show up, demanded they be allowed through checkpoints with metal detectors, then told them to march on the Capital and that he would be there with them (he lied, obviously), with one little throwaway word of CYA tossed in at the end to placate his apologists. He then sat back and gleefully watched, doing nothing to stop them, and after they were all prosecuted, he pardoned all of them once assuming power.
This is what makes Trump’s supporters different. They act at his behest, often with his explicit imprimatur and support. This is not a “liberal media” double standard. This is a complete false equivalence which refuses to acknowledge the obvious. The people you cite rioting on behalf of left-wing causes don't do so waving pro-Biden/Harris flags—believe it or not, they actually don't much like the Democrats and, unlike the MAGA right, are happy to vote against them for spite—and they don't get a pass from law enforcement or the media, which reports on them like anything else.
You want to claim that these ICE officials are just “enforcing the law”? They're not. Enforcing the law requires acting according to law. It means giving due process. It means obeying court orders. It means not calling in the National Guard when the governor didn't request it, not invoking wartime powers when we aren't at war, and not declaring emergencies for things which represent longstanding problems that the President simply prefers to deal with quickly and with a minimum of resistance.
Good god man, Hegseth is mobilizing the goddamn Marines to go into LA!
The media bends over backward to try and sane-wash Trump and give his reckless, indefensible behavior the benefit of the doubt and some patina of respectability, in a futile attempt to be seen as neutral on matters where no sane person could be. They get bashed by the left constantly for soft-pedaling Trump's outrageous behavior as “unconventional” or talking about his “confrontational style” or saying that his “approach differs” from that of his opponents.
During elections season they flyspecked Harris like a normal candidate yet practically ignored Trump's constant barrage of unhinged rants promising retribution against his political foes. Bezos pulled a WAPO endorsement of Harris after meeting with Trump—after which he had the audacity to lecture us all on perceived media bias. Ditto for the LA Times, whose owner's daughter then tried to run cover by claiming it was over the Gaza war. It was supposed to be about avoiding political bias—or not! Maybe it was for explicitly political reasons that some people will like. Whatever you need to hear, take your pick.
Meanwhile ABC, who caved to settling a ridiculous lawsuit by Trump last year to avoid being in his crosshairs (encouraging Trump to file an even more laughable suit against CBS, quite possibly so that their parent company, Paramount, could hand him a bribe in the form of a settlement to dissuade him from derailing their merger plans), just fired an anchor who'd been with them for 28 years for tweeting about Stephen Miller being a “hateful” person, which is about as close to objective fact as an opinion can get.
So you see, real American media has been quite deferential to Trump lately, arguably to the point of corruption. All while their journalists, who actually do care about truth and informing the public, are forced to bite their tongues and swallow their apprehensions over watching their country sink into authoritarianism. So determined are they to uphold a standard utterly ignored by the massive network of unapologetic right-wing pro-Trump propaganda that have the audacity to refer to themselves as “news”, yet have been repeatedly exposed for blatantly lying to the American public for the sake of profits.
Do you not see the irony of how Jeff is here complaining about the media playing into Trump's hands, while you are claiming that the exact same media are biased shills for the left?
- "Here's what you're ignoring: when Trump's supporters do bad things, they're done either at the behest of, or with the explicit endorsement of, Donald Trump."
I'm not ignoring it, that's exactly what I'm saying. Judgement of political violence is not, in our current information environment, a matter of degree or kind. The question is always Lenin's: who whom. In other words, when they're violent (for Trump), it's bad. When we're violent (against Trump), it's good.
Not just acceptable or forgivable, but GOOD.
- "Do you not see the irony of how Jeff is here complaining about the media playing into Trump's hands, while you are claiming that the exact same media are biased shills for the left?"
No, I don't think that fits the definition of "irony." And I definitely do think that those two things are not at all in opposition. The exact same media are indeed biased shills for the left AND by behaving that way they are indeed playing into Trump's hands. (To get my point here you have to understand that normal people are not the blank-slate sheep of postmodernist fantasy who can continually be reprogrammed by exposure to the latest download of "narrative." People remember the dissonances between what they saw for themselves and what they were told by the media and Democrats in 2020 and are evaluating the current situation in light of that. They're not buying the bullshit this time.)
I think to fix this issue we need a scale of badness for protests. I propose a scale based units of January 6s.
Each unit would be called a Kinzinger, so if the LA riots are twice as bad as Jan 6 they would be a 2 Kinzinger riot.
Okay, I'll be less coy.
Those were all bad things. A sitting president inciting a riot to keep himself in power is much worse, in my opinion. And an anchor who agrees with my opinion might use certain words to describe one but not the others.
Maybe you disagree on how I rank these things.
But if we don't allow ourselves to distinguish differences of degree out of fear of looking biased, there is nothing that Trump can't get away with. Trump shoots someone on Fifth Avenue -- "well, what about Luigi Mangione?"
And so I just can't accept downplaying the threat that 1/6 represents with the observation that there perhaps exists an alternate universe where Biden did it and it was covered differently.
In this alternate universe, I would guess that CNN still calls it an insurrection, but maybe mentions it 5,000 times instead of 50,000. And Fox News, as much "the media" as CNN, dedicates their 8 PM slot to the subject for the next ten years. But I don't *know*, you don't know, and there's a reason we both don't know. Because it didn't happen, and I think that matters.
what was the "money" quote from Trump on January 6 that establishes he "incited a riot"
Second, do you honestly believe, in your heart of hearts, that this was an attempted coup?
I would say his intent was made clear by the fact that:
- he declined to call them off for hours after he found out what was happening despite pleas from his allies to do so
- he pursued other means of altering election results such as pressuring state election officials at around the same time
- he pardoned the people involved and called it a "beautiful day"
Yes, all of his actions make it more likely than not he intended to actually stay in power. It would be weird if this was just for fun.
So there wasn't one.
Do you remember when they announced on the news that they took the nuclear codes away from Trump? That's a coup, my dear friend. Not an attempted one, an actual palace coup. Our elected President was removed from his lawful position as Commander in Chief (I do, for the record, support having more than one person make the decision on use of nuclear weapons. This wasn't that.)
We could look at what happened when a mob breached the White House perimeter and the Secret Service put the President into his bunker. Which was to report on it once and then never bring it up again, so people simply don't believe it happened at all.
I, too, believe that taxis are symbols of our democracy, core to our nation's identity, and are the people responsible for leading our country. These situations are perfectly analogous.
The Babylon Bee had it right when they thanked the protesters for standing on a burning car waving the Mexican flag in LA. You couldn't stage a better Republican commercial for the 2028 presidential campaign.
They have and always will hostike invading army. They took what used to be the republican bastion of California and flooded it with Mexicans until it became a one party dem shithole that hundreds of thousands of natives flee every year. That’s the goal everywhere.
This about says it all.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-situation--twenty-one-things-that-are-true-in-los-angeles
Twenty-One Things That Are True in Los Angeles
[The final four]:
18. A president who insists on conducting aggressive ICE operations in a city that plainly wants a lighter touch and who then responds to scattered acts of violence by putting troops in the streets and risking greater confrontation, one might worry, is less interested in ensuring law and order than he is in putting on a show of domination.
19. Such a president will increase these worries when he tweets things like this in response to alleged spitting incidents from the protesters: “‘If they spit, we will hit.’ This is a statement from the President of the United States concerning the catastrophic Gavin Newscum inspired Riots going on in Los Angeles. The Insurrectionists have a tendency to spit in the face of the National Guardsmen/women, and others. These Patriots are told to accept this, it’s just the way life runs. But not in the Trump Administration. IF THEY SPIT, WE WILL HIT, and I promise you they will be hit harder than they have ever been hit before. Such disrespect will not be tolerated!”
20. It takes discipline—extreme discipline—among protesters to deny the president of the United States violence when he’s so clearly itching for it.
21. We should all hope the protesters show more discipline than the president has shown.
These things are not truths. They are absurd ideological wishcastings.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. Here are the other seventeen:
1. ICE officers have the legal authority to locate and detain aliens who are in the country unlawfully.
2. Not all lawful exercises of authority are wise, prudent, or smart.
3. Not all lawful exercises of authority are politically popular within communities affected by them.
4. Thus, to say that ICE has the legal authority to detain large numbers of people in Los Angeles is not to say doing so in the face of community opposition is wise, prudent or smart. The presence of community opposition to this law enforcement activity is not surprising.
5. Political demonstrations against ICE operations are a wholly appropriate means of showing community anger and frustration at the administration’s choices of how to deploy law enforcement resources.
6. Throwing rocks, burning Waymo cars, and committing other forms of violence are not legitimate forms of political expression. These are dangerous acts that threaten people’s safety and property. They are also crimes.
7. Not all crimes require a federal response. Normally, people throwing rocks or burning cars in Los Angeles are handled by local authorities, though admittedly, the feds tend to take very seriously attacks on federal officers designed to impede federal law enforcement functions.
8. Not all crimes and situations of lawlessness that do require a federal response require the deployment of the national guard. Most simply require federal investigation and prosecution.
9. Not all situations of lawlessness that do require deployment of the national guard require the deployment of active duty Marines.
10. As a general matter, the deployment of the national guard by the president requires the consent of a state’s governor.
11. Presidential deployment of the national guard over the objection of a governor can lawfully take place only—of relevance here—during actual or threatened rebellion against the United States. (See this excellent piece by Chris Mirasola.)
12. Scattered acts of violence in the course of protests against ICE activities is something less than a rebellion. It is something less than a threatened rebellion.
13. It is also something notably less than a “violent insurrectionist mob,” as the president—who knows a little something about violent, insurrectionist mobs—is very well aware.
14. The deployment of national guard or active duty troops in an American city to put down a rebellion or insurrection that isn’t happening, even if lawful, risks antagonizing people already offended by ICE actions they consider excessive. See points (2), (3), and (4).
15. Such actions sometimes lead to tragic and unnecessary confrontations that give rise to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young songs.
16. Avoiding tragic and unnecessary confrontations is generally desirable.
17. It is thus unwise, imprudent, and stupid to take actions for performative reasons that one might reasonably anticipate would increase the risks of such confrontations
Here it is. Apparently incumbent on every single protestor to show better judgment than the literal president.
Exercising better judgment than your enemies is a good way to beat your enemies.
I see. So if the Waymo weren’t burned then the ICE agents would have gone home without abducting anyone?
No, however neither did burning the Waymos materially hinder ICE operartions. At best it removed 3 cameras available prosecuting vandalism charges.
It did however provide maga striking visuals to further their propaganda efforts.
Honestly I think the larger tactical error was all the Mexican flags. If it instead was American flags much harder to spin into the foreign invaders narrative.
Of course they'd still try to, but still better to contest the shot than leave the corner three open.
https://bsky.app/profile/notalawyer.bsky.social/post/3lrc5ofbdgk22
I don’t really disagree with you abstractly, but I think it’s unreasonable to expect any group of hundreds of people to each individually act rationally at all times. Particularly when their community is literally under threat from the military.
On the other hand, we *should* expect the president to act rationally. I know Trump makes that difficult, but IMO this is among the worst things he’s done in office and it looks like he’s just getting started. That should be the headline among people who know better (which Jeff usually does).
I dunno, when we had BLM protests in MY city, the other protestors ATTACKED the guy who was wielding a street sign to bust up a copcar. "That's our police car, with our tax dollars, and we'll be damned if we let you wreck it. We have to pay for the new one!"
They shouted him down and got the idiot to stop.
(These are the "concerned citizens" who show up to talk to the Police when they have a "listen to the citizens" day. They know our policemen, and while they may not always be happy with them, they aren't this Big Unknown Bad Group).
Which is a pretty low bar, no?
Sorry, I’m with the Waymo-burner on this one. I’ve had it up to here with self-driving taxis deporting American citizens and killing Palestinian children.
"It could turn very volatile if you move law enforcement in there in the wrong way, and turn what is just a bunch of people having fun watching cars burn into a massive confrontation and altercation between officers and demonstrators,"
This was actually said by an ABC News anchor on air. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
"For all that’s been written about media trends, we maybe haven’t talked enough about how the switch from the written word to video has changed news."
Postman was seeing what TV...and by association video...was doing to political and public discourse. He had quite a bit to say about it in "Amusing Ourselves To Death"....mid-80's.
McDonald's is limiting ketchup packets?
Oh no, the economy IS tanking!
I don’t even have a Panera near me 😁
You may as well ask the news not to run the footage of the water-skiing squirrel. Ain't gonna happen.
You may have already figured this out, but I realize now that "dickheads" are the MAGA of the left.
We're a nation addicted to cosplay and spectacle; anything that can be reduced to a TicTok, Reel, Youtube short. That it impacts real people, most of whom just want t olive their lives is incidental.
The show must go on.
One thing missing from this analysis is that the reason a self-driving vehicle was burned is because LAPD (and thus presumably the FBI) can access Waymo camera footage and has used it as evidence in prosecutions.
"I only killed the witness because they had incriminating evidence against me" does not seem like a valid excuse.
I’m not saying it’s an excuse, I’m saying this is being portrayed as random violence when there is a specific reason for it, and that reason is the police state.
Trump and his evil, cynical minions are dying for their Reichstag Fire moment and think this might be it. Please, protesters, don’t give it to them by spitting, hitting, throwing stuff, and giving yourself a righteous adrenaline rush while playing into Trump’s hands. And ditch the Mexican flags.