While the list of corporations cutting ties with Donald Trump and other Republicans is growing longer, those companies would be well advised to revisit the president’s actual comments, as I did at PJ Media and note one particularly interesting passage (out of many) that would be exculpatory in a court of law. Or maybe in an impeachment.
Three hours and 44 minutes into the rally, which featured several speakers, the president said something curious about federal monuments and buildings. The comment drew big cheers from the crowd.
As I reported, the president mentioned the sanctity of federal buildings and monuments.
Ironically, in his on-prompter/off-prompter remarks, the president mentioned how the crowd extended all the way to the Washington Monument. He promised he wouldn’t allow the names of the Washington Monument, Jefferson, and Lincoln Memorials to be changed. He added that he’d imposed tougher penalties for those who denigrate, vandalize, or hurt American monuments and how after it went into effect, antifa and BLM stopped attacking federal monuments. The remark was cheered.
“[T]hen we signed a little law – you hurt our monuments , you hurt our heroes, you go to jail for ten years and everything stopped. You noticed? It stopped. It all stopped.”
Remember, it was Trump who raised the punishment for targeting federal property after the burning of the church across from the White House. That attack was so serious that the president was sent to the nuclear bunker in fear of the building being sacked by the Leftist mob.
WATCH: President Trump walks across Lafayette Park to St. John’s Church. Holding a Bible he says, “We have a great country. That’s my thoughts.” pic.twitter.com/A3HS8hR32p
— CSPAN (@cspan) June 1, 2020
After the burning of the Episcopal church by antifa and BLM, the Left, media, and even one of the pastors at the church, said little of the arson, but pilloried the president for borrowing a Bible from the church and posing with it for a photo. Such is their hatred of this man.
On June 26, 2020, Trump signed an executive order called, “Executive Order on Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Violence.”
The order read, in part:
My Administration will not allow violent mobs incited by a radical fringe to become the arbiters of the aspects of our history that can be celebrated in public spaces. State and local public officials’ abdication of their law enforcement responsibilities in deference to this violent assault must end.
[…]In the midst of these attacks, many State and local governments appear to have lost the ability to distinguish between the lawful exercise of rights to free speech and assembly and unvarnished vandalism. They have surrendered to mob rule, imperiling community safety, allowing for the wholesale violation of our laws, and privileging the violent impulses of the mob over the rights of law-abiding citizens.
[…]The desire of the Congress to protect Federal property is clearly reflected in section 1361 of title 18, United States Code, which authorizes a penalty of up to 10 years’ imprisonment for the willful injury of Federal property.
[…]It is the policy of the United States, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to withhold Federal support from State and local law enforcement agencies that have failed to protect public monuments, memorials, and statues from destruction or vandalism.
We’ve noticed that many hyperventilating people haven’t bothered to look at what the president actually said before the Capitol breach, but only at what some of his supporters did. They blame the president for revving up the crowd and plan to impeach him for it.
There were some very odd and violent characters who forced their way in and, in some cases, were allowed into the Capitol Building by the Capitol Police.
As I’ve noted multiple times here on PJ Media and on my podcast, what the mob did was an abominable thing. But the mob members did it.
If you’re going to blame the president for charging up the crowd for a riot, it would be intellectually honest to point out the way in which the president tamped it down as well.
Furthermore, the mob that attacked the Capitol Building – a federal monument filled with federal monuments – likely did it after hearing the president reiterate the higher penalties for those who would destroy monuments and federal property.
The rally-goers not only heard that, but they also cheered it.