Trump supporters storm the Capitol Building

[Canuck]

Get a subscription to the Washington Post already!
We gotta support the papers that are actually interesting in promoting the truth.

[Mark_Weston]

1. The General commanding the DC Guard, like all Guard commanders, apparently has the authority to act on his own initiative to defend life and property, and the federal government, in case of emergency. In this case the Pentagon specifically rescinded this authority and told him that he couldn’t take any action without going up the chain of command first.

2. The commander of the Capitol Police called him on the weekend before the 6th asking him informally whether he could provide backup if needed. He said yes, but he’d need a formal request that he could pass up the chain of command. He says he never got one.

3. The only force he had immediately available was a 40-man - presumably, a single platoon - quick reaction force. It’s hard for me to see how this would have been enough to make a difference, even if the response had been immediate.

4. It took two hours plus and a ginormous conference call before the Pentagon would release the Guard to support the Capitol Police. Apparently there was quite a lot of talk about the “optics” of committing uniformed troops to policing a demonstration.

[Woolen_Horde]

Lol. “Demonstration” when the entire world is watching Congress get literally ransacked.

[CraigM]

Yeah, I don’t recall conversations about optics during the BLM marches post George Floyd.

[Tman]

@Mark_Weston

In this case the Pentagon specifically rescinded this authority and told him that he couldn’t take any action without going up the chain of command first.

When did they revoke that authority? Was it after the backlash of the BLM riots or was it near the end of the year? Timing matters.

[inactive_user]

Thanks @Mark_Weston!

[Mark_Weston]

@Woolen_Horde

Lol. “Demonstration” when the entire world is watching Congress get literally ransacked.

Best not to focus on word choice, because that was me paraphrasing.

@Tman

When did they revoke that authority? Was it after the backlash of the BLM riots or was it near the end of the year? Timing matters.

Here’s the most relevant three paras:

But the restrictions the Pentagon placed on Walker also contributed to the delay. He needed to wait for approval from McCarthy and acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller before dispatching troops, even though some 40 soldiers were on standby as a quick reaction force. That standby force had been assembled in case the few hundred Guard members deployed that day on the District’s streets to assist police with traffic control and crowd management needed help, Walker said.

The Pentagon required the highest-level approval for any moves beyond that narrow mission, in part because its leaders had been lambasted for actions the D.C. Guard took during last June’s racial justice protests, including helicopters that flew low over demonstrators in D.C. Top officials concluded those maneuvers resulted from “fragmentary orders” that hadn’t received high-level approval and were looking to prevent a repeat of that situation.

“After June, the authorities were pulled back up to the secretary of defense’s office,” McCarthy said in comments to The Post. “Any time we would employ troops and guardsmen in the city, you had to go through a rigorous process. As you recall, there were events in the summer that got a lot of attention, and that was part of this.”

[inactive_user]

So it really was BLM’s fault!

[sillhouette]

Andrew Oxford (andrewboxford)

[ShivaX]

Scott Wong (scottwongDC)

Reading the injuries makes me realize that if this was any other group, there would be dead people across the nation and we’d lose all our Rights. But since it was a Right-wing incident, provoked by right-wing politicians, we really need to pretend it didn’t happen and hold no one really accountable other than a few scapegoats that were on the ground.

[ShivaX]

Radley Balko (radleybalko)

Radley Balko (radleybalko)

InMinivanHell (inminivanhell)

Radley Balko (radleybalko)

[KevinC]

@Twitter

He’s also an elder in the Mormon church

Just to clarify, basically all males 18 years of age or older in the LDS faith are “elders”. Saying he’s an elder in the Mormon church just means he’s a Mormon.

[LockerK]

Of course he has a pickup with both an American and Trump flag and hasn’t taken down his election lawn signs.

[Mark_Asher]

Lock him up!

[Balasarius]

Ooh, he races a 2015 Z28. Nice.

Hopefully not anymore, though.

[MikeOberly]

LAW AND ORDER.

Haley Byrd Wilt (byrdinator)

[KevinC]

Let me tell you, after 2020 it takes a lot for me to feel sympathetic towards the cops but by golly, the Trumpers managed to do it.

[ShivaX]

@KevinC

Let me tell you, after 2020 it takes a lot for me to feel sympathetic towards the cops but by golly, the Trumpers managed to do it.

Buried lede for me was that a 2nd officer had committed suicide and the media apparently mostly ignored it for 2 weeks?

And context always matters at the end of the day. Being stabbed with a stake for trying to defend democracy vs being hit with a waterbottle while beating people protesting you murdering people is a pretty big divide.

[KevinC]

@ShivaX

And context always matters at the end of the day.

Absolutely.

[jpinard]

@SlainteMhath

I know so many people like this. White middle-class Christian Conservatives with all the advantages who complain endlessly about how they are the victims. So fucking sick of it.

Me too.