The Daily - The Showdown at Lafayette Square

Episode Date: June 4, 2020

This episode contains sounds of explosives and descriptions of violence.Today, we go inside a high-stakes White House debate over how President Trump should respond to reports that he was hiding in a bunker while the nation’s capital burned. This is the story of what happened in Lafayette Square. Guest: Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading: Our chief White House correspondent explains why, when the history of the Trump presidency is written, the clash with protesters that preceded President Trump’s walk across Lafayette Square may be remembered as one of its defining moments.“He did not pray,” said Mariann E. Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, said of Mr. Trump’s militarized visit to St. John’s church for a photo opportunity. “He did not mention George Floyd.”

No justice! No peace! No racism! No peace! No justice! No peace! No racism! No peace! And now all of a sudden we see the military police getting closer and closer to the demonstrators. So essentially these police you see right here, and they're advancing again. Press, press. And now they're... Oh my gosh. That's a photographer. What's going on now? A member of the press. Now there's just a lot of violence erupting.

Ben, back up, back up. Hit me up! Grab my chest! Move! Move! Move across the street! Move! Move across the street! They are trying to block us in like cattle right now.

They are trying to block us in the street like cattle. This is actual people out here fighting for what they know is right peacefully and the police are just doing whatever they freaking want. Because, why? From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, the story of what happened inside Lafayette Square in Washington, and the high-stakes White House debate it has revealed about using the American military to quell American protests. It's Thursday, June 4th. Peter Baker, tell us about the hours leading up to this moment in Lafayette Square.

What was happening inside the White House? Well, you had President Trump waking up Monday morning feeling agitated about what had been going on. He had spent the night before watching television footage, seeing the disruption in the streets, particularly the violence and the looting. He also was agitated about the fact that the news reports over the weekend had disclosed that he had gone to the bunker underneath the White House on Friday night as protesters were outside the gates.

The president was taken to an underground bunker, and that does show that there was a significant fear of the situation that was unfolding out here. He really stayed largely silent this entire weekend. We learned amid protests outside the White House on Friday, the president was rushed to an underground bunker by secret service. He doesn't like the idea that somehow he's weak. The image was grating on him. And so he felt like he had to do something. He felt like there had to be action. Right. So he arrives in the Oval Office for a meeting with his advisors where they sit down and discuss what to do. And they're talking about what the options are. And some of his

advisors are telling him, look, you have to do something to retake the streets. You can't let tonight go by and look like it did last night. And one of the options that's discussed is something called the Insurrection Act. And it's a law that's been on the book for about two centuries. And it lets the president send the active duty military into American streets if he deems it necessary to quell disturbances or uprisings. And sometimes he can do it over the objections even of the governors of the states themselves. And it causes rather extraordinary debate, apparently, inside the Oval Office. The Vice President and Secretary of Defense, apparently, were favorable with the idea. They thought that perhaps the military could move faster than the National Guard, they could make a

difference in the streets. But there are two rather important dissenters, and they were the Attorney General Bill Barr and General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They were worried for a couple reasons. One, Bill Barr talked about states' rights. The idea of sending the military, the federal military, in over the objection of governors really kind of goes against the grain of a conservative philosophy about how, you know, states are supposed to be predominant. And then General Milley was worried about the idea of these active duty troops in the middle of American streets and said, look, you've got enough force here in the Capitol anyway, if that's your concern, to take control already. We've got enough with the National Guard and the Secret Service and the D.C. police and so on. We don't need to have active duty troops come here.

So it was a big debate. Voices were raised. Tensions were high. And in the end, the president kind of put off a decision a little bit. So while he's still really thinking about what to do here, he emerges from this discussion with his advisors and gets on a conference call with the governors. We've got a number of people here that you'll be seeing a lot of. General Milley is here. And he's really already got a head of steam going.

We're shocked that you're not using the greatest resource you can use, and they're trained for this stuff, and they're incredible. He's berating them. He's calling them weak. Why you're not calling them up? I don't know, but you're making a mistake because you're making yourself look like fools. He says they need to dominate the demonstrators. You have to dominate.

If you don't dominate, you're wasting your time. They're going to run over you. You're going to look like a budget jerk. And in fact, he puts Mark Esper, the defense secretary, on the line. Thank you, Mr. President. And he says... to dominate the battle space.

You have deep resources in the guard. I stand ready. The chairman stands ready. The head of the National Guard stands ready to fully support. These governors need to dominate the battle space. That's what he calls it, the battle space. Now, remember, when we talk about a battle space, we're talking about American streets here.

We're talking about cities in the United States of America. So go out there and get them. Good luck tonight. And if you have any information, let us know, please. Thank you very much. And he gets off this call and they begin planning for a statement that he's going to make.

He's going to make a statement from the Rose Garden in which he will make this threat. He will say to the public, if these governors can't handle it, then I will invoke the Insurrection Act and send in the active duty military. Wow. Yes. Wow. Yes, wow is right. That's a big, big deal. We don't normally see presidents send the military into the streets, particularly over the objections of the governors. So what happens once he makes this decision?

He's going to address the American people and issue this threat of using the military. Right. But that's not enough. So he has a separate side meeting with just a few advisors, including Ivanka Trump, his daughter, and there's this idea. What about after the statement, he marched over to St. John's Church,

which is the Episcopal Church about a block away from the White House that had a small fire the night before. And then he would demonstrate by doing so that he wasn't going to allow this kind of disorder on the streets. He was going to protect American institutions like St. John's from these rioters, from these looters and desecrators of a church. But it was going to be a secret. They weren't telling people, at least not that many people. And just to be clear, Peter, why in this side meeting did they settle on this particular church? Well, St. John's Church is a historic icon in

America. It's called the Church of Presidents. Every president since James Madison has worshiped there at least once. It's usually the site of a prayer service the morning of a presidential inauguration in which an incoming president goes there to pray first. So it's got a lot of symbolism. Okay, so what happens next? Well, Bill Barr, the attorney general, was in charge of the response to the demonstrations because he's running federal law enforcement.

And he had decided earlier in the day that the security perimeter around the White House needed to be expanded, needed to move further out, partly because of the fire at St. John's Church, partly because there'd been graffiti on the Treasury Department, which is right next to the White House. But when he came out late in the afternoon on Monday

to see how things were looking just before the president was gonna give his statement, he discovered that the perimeter had not been moved at all. In fact, the protesters were right there on the northern edge of Lafayette Square on H Street between the square and St. John's Church. There's no way for the president to get there without moving those protesters out. Now, the protesters had been there all day. They were generally peaceful.

They had not been any threat to the police. They were not burning anything. They were not doing any threat to the police. They were not burning anything. They were not doing any of the things that had been done a couple nights earlier. But Bill Barr gives the order at that point to clear the protesters out. So then we begin to notice some movement. A couple counter-assault officers

from the Secret Service suddenly appear on the roof of the West Wing, pointing their binoculars towards Lafayette Square. We don't see that very often. A truck full of National Guard troops suddenly rumbled its way up inside the White House compound, heading back up to Pennsylvania Avenue, outside the visitor's gate, and then turning right.

At the same time... You see more military personnel and Secret Service personnel moving closer and closer towards the protesters in Lafayette Park right now. Park police, Secret Service and other authorities in the Lafayette Square begin to move on the protesters. It's a peaceful protest. What are you doing? At one point, the police began to kneel down on their knees, and some of the protesters thought they were expressing solidarity the way a few police units had done around the country. But instead, actually, they were putting on their gas masks.

Wow. Anybody hurt you out here, you don't want to do that to a lady. You know you don't. And then, of course... Oh, my God, oh, my God. Mounted police have been coming down the street. You're going to see them in the frame now to clear what has been an entirely peaceful protest.

Not 98%, not 99%, but 100% peaceful protest here today. It all began to be unleashed. There was a pepper spray, a smoke grenade, flash grenades, and mountain police. And suddenly, these peaceful protesters

and clergy, by the way, who were there at St. John's on the patio of the church were forcibly shoved and pushed away from the area. Wow, clergy as well as protesters. Clergy as well. And it was a pretty tumultuous scene for them

as everybody started to run and flee. It's not even curfew. I had my hands up on my knees. It's not even curfew. And it's happening at the exact same moment the president has begun to speak in the Rose Garden. Thank you very much. My fellow Americans, my first and highest duty as president is to defend our great country and the American people. You have this incredible split screen moment. If a city or state refuses to take

the actions that are 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. The president is saying, I am your president of law and order. I am your president of law and order and an ally of all peaceful protesters. But then he adds, I'm also an ally of all peaceful protesters. At the same time, he's saying he's an ally of peaceful protesters. Peaceful protesters just a block away are being confronted forcibly by law enforcement officers in riot gear using pepper spray and mounted police on the order of the president's attorney general. My administration is fully committed that for George and his family,

justice will be served. He will not have died in vain. So in the Rose Garden, while he's speaking, you could hear some of the flash grenades, some of the bangs and the pops that were happening across the way. But we cannot allow the righteous cries and peaceful protesters to be drowned out by an angry mob. And nobody knew what that was about, really. And the president at the very end of his speech kind of gives away a hint. Thank you very much. And now I'm going to pay my respects to a very, very special place. Thank you very much.

And so he walks out of the north side of the White House, down the driveway toward the gates, and emerges onto Pennsylvania Avenue. And he's followed by the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, his White House Chief of Staff, and a handful of other aides, as well as a phalanx of security Secret Service agents who are following him and the reporters. Mr. President, your thoughts right now? And he makes his way across Pennsylvania Avenue and into Lafayette Square and across the square. It's about a thousand feet maybe from the White House to St. John's Church. And what happens

once he gets there? Well, he's there in the church, he's boarded up, and there's nobody there to greet him. He's not there to get a tour. He's not there to look at the fire damage, which is inside. You can't see it from the outside. He's not there to meet with any of the ministers. They weren't told he was coming. He's not there to meet with the protesters, obviously. They had just been cleared out. He just stands there for the cameras to take a picture of him. And his daughter, Ivanka, hands him a Bible. And he holds up the Bible as a prop, in effect. There's no particular reason why he has it. He's not reading from it. He's not taking an oath on it. He's not, you know, making a prayer. He's just holding it up for the cameras.

And that's basically it. At that point, just after a couple of minutes, he's done and he walks on back to the White House. So he doesn't deliver any remarks. He doesn't read from the Bible. He just stands there with it in front of this boarded up church. Exactly right. Yes. I mean, I think the message is the photograph, right? The photograph says, I'm standing with religious Americans and other middle Americans who feel affronted by the violence and the looting that they've seen accompanying the peaceful protests in the streets across the country.

And it's, you know, Michael, you and I have seen hundreds if not thousands of photo ops over the years, right? And I've seen a lot of presidents do stuff for the cameras. But I've never seen anything like this. I've never seen anything where peaceful protesters were scattered with chemical sprays and flash grenades and so forth to make the way for a president to pose for the cameras. We'll be right back. Peter, what was the reaction to that scene from everybody who figured out in the ensuing hours what exactly had happened?

Well, the reaction from his critics was just instantaneous and visceral. Every member of this co-equal body should condemn what this president did, trampling upon the most sacred right of this nation, to assemble. This is a scene that reminds us of pictures we have all gotten used to from authoritarian states around the world, right?

Where riot police are used to disperse peaceful protesters that are unwelcome by a strongman government. Shame on him to stand and hold up the Bible. His narcissism has become more important than the nation's well-being that he leads. He's preening and sweeping away all the guardrails of the law and protected our democracy. And you instantly heard the president's Democratic critics go there. They actually used words like fascist and dictator.

It was very quick. After the president's reality show ended last night, probably laid in bed, pleased with himself for descending another rung on the dictatorial ladder. You heard the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, to whom the St. John's Church belongs, absolutely outraged, telling people that she didn't know this was happening. I just want the world to know that we in the Diocese of Washington, we distance ourselves from the incendiary language of this president. Nobody had told her and she would never have approved the president using her church as a prop. He used the church and he used the Bible in some ways as symbols to demonstrate or to symbolize American military power.

And even some of the Republicans, I think, were pretty upset about this. You heard from a few of them that they thought this went way too far. Republican Senator Ben Sasse said, quote, I'm against clearing out a peaceful protest for a photo op that treats the word of God as a political prop. Senators like Ben Sasse and others expressed their concerns about the president using the Bible at a church for a photo op. If your question is, should you use tear gas to clear a path so the president can go have a photo op, the answer is no. Have a photo. The answer is no. The president and the defense secretary using the military this way and talking about America this way has led to criticism from some esteemed military leaders. And some of the most interesting criticism came not from the political world, which you might expect, but from the military, which felt very uncomfortable about this, very uncomfortable with the idea that force was used against protesters to create the

space for a photo op, and particularly that the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would be on his side, would be walking with him, in effect, participating in what seems like such a political moment. And why was that so offensive to members of the military or former members of the military? Well, we have a long, fraught history, 200 years of that in this country, where we have resisted the idea of the military being used on domestic soil against Americans. It sort of goes against the grain from the very start of the country. That's the kind of thing that has always made Americans feel uncomfortable, and the military in particular feel uncomfortable. They're there to fight our wars overseas.

They're not there to police American cities, and they're not there to be used to suppress American demonstrations. It goes against their view of the military's role in society. And so have they been used in that way in the past? There have been moments where the military has been brought in in domestic circumstances. And of course, each time it was kind of fraught. Particularly, we remember the civil rights era when Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, all three of them cited the Insurrection Act and sent the military into the South to enforce desegregation orders that segregationist governors were refusing to abide by. It was the only way those presidents saw to combat racism in the South. And that was a fraught

moment. There's a lot of bitter history there that people still remember. The most recent time our president has sent the military in domestic context was in 1992 when George H.W. Bush sent troops to Los Angeles after the riots following the Rodney King trial. That was at least with the consent, in fact, the request of the governor of California who felt he needed the help. That was a different situation. But when President Bush's son, President George W. Bush, was confronted with kind of a similar moment in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina, he pulled back. He hesitated to invoke the Insurrection Act and send in the 82nd Airborne to New Orleans because he didn't want to be seen as a white Republican president overriding a Democratic woman governor

and a Democratic African-American mayor who did not want the federal government taking over in New Orleans. So it's not that it hasn't been done before, but it's rare and it's been controversial every time it has been. So Peter, with all that debate and criticism, especially from the military, swirling around the president, where does he ultimately fall on this still unresolved question that we started this interview with of using the military against these protests? Well, he holds back on any kind of deployment of the military in the states, but he does order military units into the one place where he has the most sway, which is to say

Washington, D.C., which is a federal district and not a state. In Washington, it's the only place in the country where the National Guard actually reports to the president, not to a governor. And so on Tuesday, we would see military vehicles appearing at street corners in Washington, D.C. Street corners were, you know, not that long ago, at least pre-virus. Everyday people would be walking their dogs

and pushing their baby strollers and going to work. And there it was. So active military troops in downtown Washington, D.C. Right, exactly. A kind of thing we haven't seen in a couple generations, I think, at least in a big way. And it is jarring. It is something, of course, that residents of this city finds, you know,

very, very discomforting. The mayor made very clear she doesn't want the military in the streets of Washington, certainly not under President Trump's control. And she's made clear she sees President Trump

as a divisive force, somebody who's making things worse rather than better. And how is the military viewing this decision to deploy troops in Washington given the reaction to what happened in Lafayette Square that you described? Very uncomfortable. You're seeing a lot of consternation among the professional ranks.

You saw Mike Mullen, the former Joint Chiefs chairman under President Bush and later President Obama, issue a public article in which he said this is not the way it's supposed to be in America. Saying, quote, I remain confident in the professionalism of our men and women in uniform. They will obey lawful orders, but I am less confident in the soundness of the orders they will be given by this commander in chief. We must endeavor to see American cities and towns as our homes and neighborhoods. They are not battle spaces to be dominated and must never become so. You saw a former Undersecretary of Defense who sits on the Defense Science Board, a panel at the Pentagon, resign and send a pretty sharp letter to Secretary Esper saying, you know, we expect you to hold up your oath even if the president doesn't and we're

disappointed in you and you have a chance to, you know, step up. And on Wednesday. Well, good morning, everyone. Secretary Esper actually then pivoted. Over the past couple of days, there's been a fair share of reporting, some good, some bad, about what is transpiring in our great nation and the role of the Department of Defense and its leaders. Facing this backlash, he gave a press conference in which he said, I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act. He doesn't think that they should be sending active duty military personnel into the streets of American cities.

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. And it's a pretty big moment, a pretty big break from the president who had just told us two nights earlier that he thought that that might be necessary. And why do you think that the secretary of defense

would do that? This is a president who is very intolerant of dissent from his ranks. So why publicly break with the president? Well, you're right. He doesn't like when cabinet secretaries contradict him in public. And this defense secretary has been pretty good about trying not to do it when he can't avoid it. But I think, you know, he felt a lot of pressure from the professional ranks of the military. And so this was an opportunity, I guess, for him to recast himself a little bit, exhibit a little independence and give voice to the concerns of the armed forces that he is in charge of. You know, Peter,

what's interesting is from the story that you've just laid out, this entire episode, it begins with the president wanting to use the military to confront these protesters and getting rebuffed and then coming up with a kind of plan B, a workaround. And that is to go visit this church and make a show of strength that way. And that visit is carried out with so much force and so much violence that it then creates a backlash that ultimately undermines the very case for using the military in the first place. Yeah, I think there's something to that.

I mean, basically, the images we saw from Monday night were so striking that the idea of a further escalation, a militarization of the streets, became politically much harder. It was already probably too hard, but, you know, in effect, he undermined his own opportunity to do so. Now, what they would say is the mere threat of it was all he really needed to do, that they didn't necessarily want to follow through on it, that they didn't have to. And that the main goal was to send a message and to project toughness. In that sense, perhaps it worked.

Certainly to his voters, he now looks like a decisive figure. But in terms of actually sending American troops into the streets, that now seems to be much, much more politically fraught than even it had been on Monday. Peter, you've covered this presidency since it began nearly four years ago,

and you live in Washington, D.C. So I wonder in the end what you make of this entire episode of what happened at Lafayette Square. Well, I think this is going to be one of these moments that is indelible in our history books. Maybe I'm wrong, but it feels like every presidency, there are sort of a few handful of scenes or episodes that really stand out, right?

We think of Jimmy Carter and the malaise speech, or, you know, Ronald Reagan after the Challenger, or, you know, George W. Bush on the firetruck at 9-11, or worse for him, the mission accomplished speech on the aircraft carrier, right? You'd rather as a president have the triumphal moment, not the embarrassing moment. We'll decide which one this is later. Right now, people see that through their own lens. But for a lot of Americans, it's going to go down as the moment when he used force in order to clear a square of peaceful protesters to have a photo op.

And so I think that 20 years from now, when we look back at the Trump presidency, this is going to be one of those moments that stands out in the history books for future generations to remember. Peter, thank you very much. Oh, thank you. It's great talking to you. On Wednesday afternoon, Esper's predecessor, former Defense Secretary James Mattis, harshly criticized both Trump and Esper in The Atlantic magazine. Mattis wrote, quote, We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square.

of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. Never, Mattis wrote, did I dream that troops would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens, much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside. chief, with military leadership standing alongside. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Today, arrest warrants were issued for former Minneapolis police officers J.A. King, Thomas Lane, and Tu Tao. On Wednesday, the Minnesota Attorney General, Keith Ellison, charged three more former Minneapolis police officers in the death of George Floyd, accusing them of abetting his murder while at the scene. Ellison also raised the charges against former officer Derek Chauvin,

who held his knee to Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes. Chauvin, who was originally charged with third-degree murder, will now be charged with second-degree murder. The maximum penalty for such a charge is 40 years in prison. I strongly believe that these developments are in the interest of justice, for Mr. Floyd, his family, our community, and our state. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro.

See you tomorrow.