Let's start today's newsletter with a quick news quiz.
Who said this in reference to the suppression of protests on Columbia University's campus last week?
“The police came. It was all over in just two hours. It was a beautiful thing to see.”
And who said this in connection with the attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021?
“It was a very nice day.”
The answer, of course, in both cases is former President Donald Trump, who has been tossing around self-serving and frequently inaccurate stories about both events as a presidential campaign tool. He has denounced campus protests as lawless chaos while portraying the Jan. 6 riots as heroes, and has used one episode in an attempt to tarnish his own record as president. Looks like they're going to play it in another episode.
Mr. Trump has been in and out of criminal trials in New York in recent weeks, campaigning, and trying to turn university protests against the Gaza war into his own political gain. He praised the arrests of protesters and suggested in an interview with Time magazine that if protests were happening on his watch, he would call in the National Guard to quell them.
“Columbia just canceled their commencement ceremony,” President Trump said Monday in a Manhattan courthouse during his trial. “That shouldn't happen.”
President Trump has frequently used violent rhetoric, including suggesting there would be “havoc” and “possible death and destruction” if the various criminal cases against him go forward, leading President Biden to protest. attempts to portray him as a hapless leader who cannot control the situation.
But President Trump's call for order comes as he talks about January 6, the day Trump has made his presidential campaign talk about for the third time, even though it was the day of brutal violence against police officers. This is in sharp contrast to the way things are done.
He rallied to the rioters arrested that day, deploring the time some had spent in prison, calling them “hostages” and “incredible patriots,” and calling them “hostages” and “incredible patriots” who would be arrested if he returned to power. He said that he would consider pardoning him.
He is currently comparing the punishment meted out to the rioters on January 6th to the punishment meted out to the university protesters, two events that are fundamentally different.
“They took over the building. It's a big deal,” President Trump said last week, referring to the Colombian protesters, adding that their punishment was “comparable” to that of the mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6. He said he wondered if it was something he would do.
“It was an attack on democracy.”
The Biden campaign has sought to make January 6 a key pillar of its case against President Trump, as protests erupted on campuses across the country, and the resulting clashes between protesters and counter-protesters and mass arrests. The image has some Democratic supporters worried. Nervous.
“How can Democrats, and all of us on the Democratic side, say that January 6th was wrong?” Pastor Al Sharpton said on MSNBC, a comment that was quickly picked up by Fox News. . “If that same photo were to be shown on a college campus, you would lose your morals, you would lose your moral high ground.”
But many other Democrats were quick to say the campus protests and the Jan. 6 protests had little in common.
“What happened on January 6th was a violent mob. They came and attacked the Capitol Police. They came and attacked the Capitol. It was an attack on democracy.” said Harry Dunn, a former Capitol Police officer who was there. He later testified about seeing his fellow officers bloodied during a fight with the mob and about being hurled racial slurs at him.
Dunn, who is currently running for the Democratic nomination for the Maryland General Assembly, said in an interview that party members need to be clear about what happened that day, especially given President Trump's efforts to distort the facts. He said there is.
“People are really shaken up by what happened and have a strong fear that it will happen again,” he said.
Some Democrats are alarmed by Trump's comments, warning that he is giving his supporters a dangerous permission structure.
“Donald Trump is sending a message that his supporters can break the law and commit violence at any time if they follow his lead,” said the lead man in the failed impeachment of Trump in January. said Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin (Maryland). 6, as part of a months-long investigation into the day's events by a House of Commons select committee.
“Everything is in turmoil in America.”
Some Republicans are struggling to defend the contradiction of calling for the prosecution of college campus protesters while defending those accused of breaking the law on Jan. 6.
That includes Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, a Trump ally and running mate, who told CNN's Caitlan Collins last week that those who broke into and destroyed the building would be prosecuted. I was asked if I should.
“That's right,” Mr. Vance said, and Mr. Collins went on to ask why he was raising money for some of the defendants on January 6th.
Vance accused the national media of being “obsessed” with the events of Jan. 6, saying some of the protesters on Jan. 6 “worst of all, when they are charged with a misdemeanor. “The Justice Department has put a lot of pressure on us,” he said. ”
Over the weekend, some of President Trump's Republican allies in Congress sought to paint the university protests as a factor in favor of November's presidential election.
“One of the many reasons Donald Trump will win this election is because Democratic protesters put terrorist headdresses on the statue of George Washington,” Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas said on ABC on Sunday. '' he said on ABC, apparently referring to that method. Protesters threw kaffiyeh over the statue of the first president at George Washington University.
“Everything in America is in turmoil, from our borders to our campuses,” said Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who is also President Trump's running mate.
It's not clear whether that strategy will work. In 2020, Trump tried to blame Biden and Democratic mayors for racial justice protests that at times turned violent and destroyed property, but he still lost.
In addition to trying to use the campus protest to complain about the treatment of the defendants on January 6, he also used the demonstration in 2017, when white supremacists marched while shouting anti-Semitic slurs. He likened it to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. A woman was killed when her car plowed into a crowd of counter-protesters.
“Compared to the riots and anti-Israel protests happening across our country right now, Charlottesville is peanuts,” President Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social late last month. Ta.
His rhetoric may be as much about clearing his own record as it is attacking Biden.
Meanwhile, in court…
The criminal trial in which President Trump is accused of covering up a sex scandal to protect his 2016 presidential campaign is progressing rapidly inside a Manhattan courtroom. Trump is threatened with jail as prosecutors lay out their case, witnesses a longtime former employee testify against him, and secretly recorded audio is played in court. I heard that.
Here are three key exam developments you may have missed.