It's Sunday

New first verse: Jesus wept.

Whoever said "Next he's going to claim to have written" the Bible wasn't wrong.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Another Inspector General may be getting his pink slip

I'm actually surprised Horowitz still has his job after posting this about the firing of IG Atkinson:

Not to mention his part in the Russian collusion investigation.

Careful Secretary, you'll lose your job

Defense Secretary Mark Esper has expressed concern within the administration about federal law enforcement officers wearing military-style uniforms while responding to protests.

[...]

"The secretary has expressed a concern of this within the administration that we want a system where people can tell the difference,” [Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman] said. “I’m not aware of any direct conversations with DHS on this particular deployment or their particular operations in Portland over the last week or so.”

Hoffman also stressed “unequivocally” that no Pentagon assets have been or are planning to be deployed to Portland.

[...]

Similar concerns were raised in June during the height of nationwide protests against racial injustice, particularly after federal law enforcement agents forcibly cleared protesters from Lafayette Square across the White House

After the June protests, Esper and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley told the House Armed Services Committee in July they have learned of the need to better differentiate between law enforcement and the military. Milley specifically raised the issue of uniforms.

  The Hill

Wish in one hand...

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Who's being president while this jerkwad is whining about negative publicity?

Get over it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Eye witness to the Lafayette Square attack

Here's an interesting interview with an Episcopal priest who was at St. John's church when Trump's goon squad violently cleared it so he could stand with a Bible for a photo op.

UPDATE 6/1/21:

Now that people have quit asking...

The United States Secret Service said Saturday that one of their agents had used pepper spray to clear protesters from Lafayette Square ahead of President Donald Trump’s photo op, reversing an earlier statement claiming that no one from the agency had done so.

“On June 5, the U.S. Secret Service released information that the agency had concluded that no agency personnel used tear gas or capsicum spray during efforts to secure the area near Lafayette Park on Monday, June 1, based on the record and information available at that time,” the Secret Service said in a statement shared on Twitter.

“Since that time, the agency has learned that one agency employee used capsicum spray (i.e., pepper spray) during that effort,” the statement continued.

The Secret Service said that the agent used pepper spray “in response to an assaultive individual.”

  NBC

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Milley still has a little sense of shame left

The country’s top military official apologized for taking part in President Trump’s walk across Lafayette Square for a photo op after authorities cleared the area of peaceful protesters.

As senior leaders, everything you do will be closely watched, and I am not immune. As many of you saw the result of the photograph of me at Lafayette Square last week, that sparked a national debate about the role of the military in civil society. I should not have been there. My presence in that moment, and in that environment, created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics. As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it.

  NYT

Don't try to spread the guilt, dude.

We who wear the cloth of our nation come from the people of our nation, and we must hold dear the principle of an apolitical military that is so deeply rooted in the very essence of our republic.

[...]

His first public remarks since Mr. Trump’s photo op, in which federal authorities attacked peaceful protesters so that the president could hold up a Bible in front of St. John’s Church, are certain to anger the White House.

I think that's a fair assumption.

On Wednesday, the president picked another fight with the military, slapping down the Pentagon for considering renaming Army bases named after Confederate officers who fought against the Union in the Civil War.

How far are we from Trump calling in Erik Prince's mercenaries to hold his position? November 4?

General Milley’s friends said that for the past 10 days, he had been agonized about appearing — in the combat fatigues he wears every day to work — behind Mr. Trump during the walk across Lafayette Square, an act that critics said gave a stamp of military approval to the hard-line tactics used to clear the protesters.

The general believed that he was accompanying Mr. Trump and his entourage to review National Guard troops and other law enforcement personnel outside Lafayette Square, Defense Department officials said.

That's no better. It's still putting the military in the middle of a domestic situation. Good that he apologized, though. Now he can wait to get shit-canned.  Or at least shit-tweeted.

Nice try, no cigar

The tear gas was used Sunday, so that doesn't count.

Pepper spray isn't a chemical.

Of course it's a chemical. Just because capsicum (active ingredient: capsaicin) is organic doesn't mean it's not a chemical. The chemical formula for capsaicin is C18H27NO3. If you can write out the chemical formula for a substance, it's a chemical.  And were they using the organic or synthetic pepper balls? I'm guessing that's what he's playing on - if it's not synthetic, it's not a chemical.  Wrong.

Technically, it's not a gas, but it will definitely cause tears.  It will fucking burn.  The interviewer should have challenged him.

But that's beside the point, which is: you fired on peaceful protesters with serious - and possibly deadly - irritants and beat them with clubs as well.

Impeach Pompeo.

UPDATE:

UPDATE:

The DOJ headed by AG Barr?  That DOJ?

The "Take no Responsibility" administration in overdrive

I'm failing to see the distinction.

Attorney General William Barr says law enforcement officers were already moving to push back protesters from a park in front of the White House when he arrived there Monday evening, and he says he did not give a command to disperse the crowd, though he supported the decision.

[...]

“They told me they were about to make the announcement and I think they stretched the announcements over 20 minutes. During the time I was there, I would periodically hear announcements,” Barr said.

[...]

Barr said it was a Park Police tactical commander — an official he never spoke to — who gave the order for the law enforcement agencies to move in and clear the protesters.

“I’m not involved in giving tactical commands like that," he said. “I was frustrated and I was also worried that as the crowd grew, it was going to be harder and harder to do. So my attitude was get it done, but I didn’t say, ‘Go do it.’”

  Politico

Im not sure a denial could get more pathetic.

[T]he White House and others said repeatedly that the attorney general ordered officers to clear the park.

[...]

[A]dministration officials have spent much of the week trying to explain how the situation escalated and why smoke bombs, pepper balls and police on horseback were needed to clear the largely peaceful crowd.

Earlier in the week, White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany told reporters it was Barr who made the decision to push back the security perimeter outside the White House on Monday morning. McEnany said that when Barr arrived at Lafayette Park later that day to survey the security situation, he was surprised to see that action had not yet been taken.

“So he said that we needed to get going with moving that perimeter. He told the officers that out there,” McEnany said Wednesday. A person familiar with the matter also said earlier this week that Barr told law enforcement to take action to move the perimeter when he arrived in the park.

Pass the buck administration.

Many of the apparently federal agents [patroling DC] have refused to identify which agency they work for. [Eagle-eyed protesters have identified some of them as belonging to Bureau of Prisons’ riot police units from Texas, but others remain a mystery.

[...]

Just like its laws, there are too many federal agents for the government to keep track of.

[...]

[A]bsent identifying signs of actual authority the rows of federal officers appear all-but indistinguishable from the open-carrying, white militia members cosplaying as survivalists who have gathered in other recent protests against pandemic stay-at-home orders. Some protesters have compared the anonymous armed officers to Russia’s “Little Green Men,” the soldiers-dressed-up-as-civilians who invaded and occupied eastern Ukraine. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to President Donald Trump Thursday demanding that federal officers identify themselves and their agency.

[...]

[I]t helps to understand the dense and not-entirely-sensical thicket of agencies that make up the nation’s civilian federal law enforcement. With little public attention, notice and amid historically lax oversight, those ranks have surged since 9/11—growing by roughly 2,500 officers annually every year since 2000. To put it another way: Every year since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the federal government has added to its policing ranks a force larger than the entire Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Nearly all of these agencies are headquartered in and around the capital, making it easy for Attorney General William Barr to enlist them as part of his vast effort to “flood the zone” in D.C. this week with what amounts to a federal army of occupation, overseen from the FBI Washington area command post in Chinatown. Battalions of agents were mustered in the lobby of Customs and Border Protection’s D.C. headquarters—what in normal times is the path to a food court for federal workers. The Drug Enforcement Administration has been given special powers to enable it to surveil protesters. It is the heaviest show of force in the nation’s capital since the protests and riots of the Vietnam War.

[...]

The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, which serves as the general academy for federal agencies who don’t have their own specialized training facilities, lists around 80 different agencies whose trainees pass through its doors in Georgia, from the IRS’ criminal investigators and the Transportation Security Administration's air marshals to the Offices of the Inspector General for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Railroad Retirement Board. Don’t forget the armed federal officers at the Environmental Protection Agency or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Law Enforcement, whose 150 agents investigate conservation crime like the Tunas Convention Act of 1975 (16 USC § 971-971k) and the Northern Pacific Halibut Act of 1982 (16 USC § 773-773k).

[...]

A morning run around the National Mall and Capitol Hill might see you cross through the jurisdictions of the federal U.S. Capitol Police, the Park Police, the National Gallery of Art police, the Smithsonian Office of Protective Services, the Postal police, Amtrak police, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing police, the Supreme Court police, the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service, the Government Publishing Office police, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Protective Service. (Only recently did the Library of Congress police merge with the Capitol Police across the street into one unit.) Run a bit farther and you might encounter the FBI Police or the U.S. Mint police. And that’s not even counting the multistate Metro Transit police and the local D.C. Metropolitan Police.

[...]

[T]he roughly 20,000 federal prison guards known formally as the Bureau of Prisons—whose riot units make up a sizable chunk of the officers imported to D.C. and who represent the single largest component of federal officers in the Justice Department—are concerning to see on the streets in part because they’re largely untrained in civilian law enforcement; they normally operate in a controlled environment behind bars with sharply limited civil liberties and use-of-force policies that would never fly in a civilian environment.

[...]

[U]nder the Trump administration, many of these agencies have been rudderless—overseen by rotating series of acting officials. More than half of all federal civilian law enforcement right now is being led by temporary acting officials, everything from ICE and CBP to DEA.

[...]

Beyond those 132,000 federal civilian law enforcement, the U.S. has tens of thousands of military law enforcement officers, including military police units and investigators like the 2,000 agents of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, the 1,200 agents of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service or the 900 agents of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. Plus, the 40,000 armed personnel of the U.S. Coast Guard, which has broad law enforcement powers on the nation’s rivers, lakes and oceans, but is counted as part of the military.

Then there are the officers who can be spotted across Northern Virginia in white marked patrol vehicles labeled only as “United States Police,” the purposefully vague public name given to what is formally known as the CIA’s Security Protective Services, who provide security to the CIA and the Office of Director of National Intelligence. They carry weapons, but have limited law enforcement authority. (As one agent told me, only half-joking, “We can’t arrest you, but we can kill you.”)

  Politico

Police state. ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

A "mistake"

A US Park Police spokesperson said Friday in an interview it was a “mistake” to insist in a statement on Tuesday that it didn’t use tear gas the day before in a Washington, DC, park to disperse a crowd ahead of President Trump’s photo op, explicitly noting that pepper balls shot by officials irritate the eyes and cause tears.

“The point is we admitted to using what we used,” Sgt. Eduardo Delgado said. “I think the term ‘tear gas’ doesn’t even matter anymore. It was a mistake on our part for using ‘tear gas’ because we just assumed people would think CS or CN,” two common forms of tear gas.

  Vox

Uh-huh. Because we're all so "up" on the exact forms of tear gas, and you didn't want us to imagine it was one of the forms it wasn't. Sure.

But then, shortly before 4 pm, Park Police acting Chief Gregory Monahan walked back from the spokesperson’s comments and used the “tear gas” phrase again. “United States Park Police officers and other assisting law enforcement partners did not use tear gas or OC Skat Shells to close the area at Lafayette Park in response to violent protestors,” he said, referencing a type of canister found on the scene.

Just come out with it: what DID you use?

On Friday, Delgado maintained their original statement was accurate as it relates to the Park Police: “No tear gas was used by USPP officers.” US Park Police used only those nonlethal weapons as law enforcement forcibly pushed peaceful protesters away from the White House. In fact, he said — as he has before — that his agency doesn’t carry tear gases known as CN, even though canisters of all of them were found on the scene. As for CS, the agency doesn’t carry the specific type found on the Square, but it does carry CS in general.

Delgado couldn’t comment on whether or not other federal agencies, like the Secret Service, used tear gas at the protest. All law enforcement agencies involved in the violent dispersal, though, have denied launching tear gas.

[...]

“I’m not going to say that pepper balls don’t irritate you,” Delgado said about the Tuesday statement, noting they contain capsicum, an irritant derived from pepper plants. “I’m not saying it’s not a tear gas, but I’m just saying we use a pepper ball that shoots a powder.”

Fine.

The response became a national controversy in itself, with experts in policing tactics calling the distinction semantic. “Tear gas” is a broad term, often defined as a synthetic chemical irritant. Pepper spray is a naturally derived chemical irritant that causes many effects similar to that of common types of tear gas, including temporary blindness and a burning sensation in the nose.

[...]

“It was kind of a fault on our part just not saying in the first place ‘we did not use CN or CS, we used smoke and pepper balls,’ and that would’ve made it a moot point,” Delgado said. “Some people claim we purposefully tried to mislead by saying ‘we didn’t use tear gas, we used pepper balls.’ ... That was not our intention.”

Of course not.

King of Retaliation, right on cue

ALL of his time is executive time.  We have no president.

President Trump on Thursday pledged to campaign against Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) when she's up for reelection in 2022 after the senator told reporters she was "struggling" with whether to vote for Trump in November.

"Few people know where they’ll be in two years from now, but I do, in the Great State of Alaska (which I love) campaigning against Senator Lisa Murkowski," Trump tweeted.

  The Hill

"Unrelated" is right.  So why bring it up?  And, btw, HE didn't give Alaska anything.

Right out loud: "Good or bad, I don't care."

"When I saw Gen. Mattis’s comments yesterday I felt like perhaps we’re getting to the point where we can be more honest with the concerns we might hold internally and have the courage of our convictions to speak up,” [Murkowski] said.

Really, Lisa? WE have always been at that point. YOU and your fellow Republicans are the ones without the courage of your convictions. Perhaps you have neither courage nor convictions if you have to wait for a former general to give you a signal.

Murkowski is not up for reelection until 2022.

Maybe that helped boost her "courage", too.

I'm going to give Lisa SOME due for voting "present" rather than "yea" on Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court here. It wasn't a "no" though.  Trump is fudging on that.  What a surprise.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

There is no substitute for the ACLU

If you can...

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Don't believe your eyes

"Came into contact with..."

See if YOU can readily identify them as journalists. 

That big-ass camera the cop knocks out of the cameraman's hands might have been a clue.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

P.S.  Off topic:  I like the credit on that video.

The St. John's Church Fiasco

Trump's Tiananmen Square.

[W]hen the history of the Trump presidency is written, the clash at Lafayette Square may be remembered as one of its defining moments.

[...]

After a weekend of protests that led all the way to his own front yard and forced him to briefly retreat to a bunker beneath the White House, President Trump arrived in the Oval Office on Monday agitated over the television images, annoyed that anyone would think he was hiding and eager for action.

[...]

Mr. Trump was stirred up on Monday morning as he met with national security and law enforcement advisers to discuss what could be done about the street unrest. The advisers told him that he could not let the nation’s capital be overrun, that the symbolism was too important and that he had to get it under control that night.

[...]

He wanted to send the military into American cities, an idea that provoked a heated, voices-raised fight among his advisers.

[...]

Vice President Mike Pence favored the idea, reasoning that it would allow quicker action than calling up National Guard units, and he was backed by Mr. Esper. But Mr. Barr and General Milley warned against it.

[...]

Several officials came away with different impressions of where Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, stood on the issue, but the discussion grew increasingly heated as voices were raised and tensions escalated. Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence then conducted a conference call with the nation’s governors in which the president berated them for being “weak” and “fools,” advising them to “dominate” the demonstrators. Mr. Esper talked about controlling “the battlespace.”

[...]

The president rhapsodized about the crackdown in Minneapolis once the National Guard moved in. “It’s a beautiful thing to watch,” he said. “It just can’t be any better. There’s no experiment needed. You don’t have to do tests.”

WTF?

[B]y the end of the day, urged on by his daughter Ivanka Trump, he came up with a more personal way of demonstrating toughness — he would march across Lafayette Square to a church damaged by fire the night before.

[...]

Just before noon, an alert went out to every Washington-area agent with Homeland Security Investigations, a division of ICE, telling them to prepare to assist with any demonstration, according to an email labeled with a “high” severity. The F.B.I. deployed its elite hostage rescue team, highly armed and trained agents more accustomed to arresting dangerous suspects than dealing with riots. And ICE deployed its “special response teams” to protect agency facilities and be on call for more.

[...]

By midafternoon on Monday, protesters had gathered again on H Street at the north side of Lafayette Square, this time peacefully. The Rev. Gini Gerbasi, the rector of St. John’s Church in Georgetown and a former assistant rector at St. John’s, arrived around 4 p.m. with cases of water for the demonstrators. Joining her on the church patio were about 20 clergy members who passed out snacks.

[...]

“There were a few tense moments,” [Rev. Gerbasi] said. “But it was peaceful.”

[...]

Inside the White House nearby, Mr. Trump was coming up with his plan to walk to the church. Several administration officials said it was his own idea; two officials said that Mr. Meadows credited [Ivanka] Trump during a senior staff meeting on Tuesday. It was crafted during an Oval Office meeting that included Ms. Trump; Mr. Meadows; Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser; and Hope Hicks, another top adviser.

At some point, Anthony Ornato, a Secret Service veteran who serves as deputy chief of staff for operations, was brought in to coordinate the logistics of the visit. Ms. Hicks came up with the visuals for how it would look. But officials privately conceded that little thought was given to what Mr. Trump would do once he actually got to the church.

[...]

Reporters were told a statement would be coming, but the march to the church was kept a secret.

[...]

At 5:07 p.m., National Guard trucks loaded with troops headed north on West Executive Avenue, a lane on the White House compound between the West Wing and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and drove past the visitors entrance, out the gates and turned right onto Pennsylvania Avenue.

Shortly after, two members of the Secret Service counterassault team appeared on the roof of the West Wing with guns and binoculars, peering north toward Lafayette Square. While snipers are stationed on the main roof of the White House from time to time, they are not usually deployed on top of the West Wing, and the sight was jarring for regulars at the building.

The White House press corps was summoned to the Rose Garden at 6:03 p.m. Outside the gates and across Lafayette Square, some of the officers in riot gear kneeled down and some protesters initially thought they were expressing solidarity as the police have done in other cities, but in fact they were putting on their gas masks.

At 6:17 p.m., a large phalanx of officers wearing Secret Service uniforms began advancing on protesters, climbing or jumping over barriers at the edge of the square at H Street and Madison Place. Officials said later that the police warned protesters to disperse three times, but if they did, reporters on the scene as well as many demonstrators did not hear it.

Read: they didn't.

Some form of chemical agent was fired at protesters, flash bang grenades went off and mounted police moved toward the crowds. “People were dropping to the ground” at the sound of bangs and pops that sounded like gunfire, Ms. Gerbasi said. “We started seeing and smelling tear gas, and people were running at us.”

[...]

As he prepared for his surprise march to the church, Mr. Trump first went before cameras in the Rose Garden to declare himself “your president of law and order” but also “an ally of all peaceful protesters,” even as peaceful protesters just a block away and clergy members on the church patio were routed by smoke and flash grenades and some form of chemical spray deployed by shield-bearing riot officers and mounted police.

[...]

[T]he president emerged from the White House, followed by a phalanx of aides and Secret Service agents as he made his way to the church, where he posed stern-faced, holding up a Bible that his daughter pulled out of her $1,540 MaxMara bag.

[...]

The scene of mayhem — barely 1,000 feet from the symbol of American democracy — that preceded the walk evoked images more commonly associated with authoritarian countries, but that did not bother the president, who has long flirted with overseas strongmen and has expressed envy of their ability to dominate.

[...]

By 6:30 p.m., [Rev. Gerbasi] said, “Suddenly the police were on the patio of St. John’s Church in a line, literally pushing and shoving people off of the patio.”

Julia Dominick, a seminarian with the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Va., and a former emergency room nurse, was tending to a hurt protester when a police line advanced.

“There was not a warning,” she said. “I’ve never been in a war. I’ve never been shot at. I’ve never been afraid in that way. Those sounds and the gas, it will be with me.” (No police agency acknowledged using tear gas, but reporters and protesters on the scene said there was clearly a chemical irritant of some kind.)

At 6:43 p.m., Mr. Trump made his statement in the Rose Garden, finishing seven minutes later, and then headed back through the White House to emerge on the north side and walk out the gates and into the park. Mr. Barr, Mr. Esper, General Milley, Mr. Meadows, Ms. Trump, Mr. Kushner and others followed him, but Mr. Pence and his staff hung back as the building emptied and watched on television instead.

Pence is no dummy. There would be no pictures of HIM in the fiasco. He might want to be president some day.

The president’s movement surprised nearly everyone, as he intended, including law enforcement. The Washington police chief said he was notified only moments beforehand. Park Police commanders on the scene were as surprised as everyone else to see the president in the park.

Which, in itself, is a foolish move.

When he reached St. John’s, Mr. Trump made no pretense of any intent other than posing for photographs — he held up the Bible carried by his daughter, then gathered a few top advisers next to him in a line. He made no remarks and then, having accomplished his purpose, headed back to the White House, passing in front of a wall with new graffiti saying, “Fuck Trump.”

The police and other forces pursued demonstrators around the capital the rest of the evening, with military helicopters even swooping low overhead in what were called shows of force. Mr. Barr and General Milley at different points roamed the streets.

[...]

By Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump boasted of success. “D.C. had no problems last night,” he wrote on Twitter. “Many arrests. Great job done by all. Overwhelming force. Domination. Likewise, Minneapolis was great (thank you President Trump!).”

By Tuesday afternoon, the crowds were back and even bigger.

[...]

Mr. Trump and his inner circle considered it a triumph that would resonate with many middle Americans turned off by scenes of urban riots and looting that have accompanied nonviolent protests of the police killing of a subdued black man in Minneapolis.

But critics, including some fellow Republicans, were aghast at the use of force against Americans who posed no visible threat at the time, all to facilitate what they deemed a ham-handed photo opportunity featuring all white faces.

[...]

Arlington County in suburban Virginia withdrew its police from those assembled to guard the White House and other federal sites after the Lafayette Square clash. Even beforehand, Democratic governors in Virginia, New York and Delaware refused to send National Guard troops requested by the Trump administration.

[...]

Mayor Muriel E. Bowser of Washington sharply objected on Tuesday and said the federal government had even privately broached the idea of taking over the city’s police force, which she pledged to resist. “I don’t think the military should be used in the streets of American cities against Americans,” she said, “and I definitely don’t think it should be done for a show.”

[...]

The spectacle staged by the White House also left military leaders struggling to explain themselves in response to criticism from retired officers that they had allowed themselves to be used as political props. Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put out word through military officials that they did not know in advance about the dispersal of the protesters or about the president’s planned photo op, insisting that they thought they were accompanying him to review the troops. 

To review the troops! What? Were they playing war? And didn't we learn a bit earlier that Esper was backing Trump's idea of calling up active duty military personnel and "controlling the battlespace"? It went badly, so he decided he actually didn't know anything about it?

By Tuesday afternoon, demonstrators had returned to the edge of Lafayette Square — where new tall fences had been erected overnight — and shouted their discontent at the line of black-clad officers.

“Take off the riot gear, I don’t see no riot here,” they chanted.

Stick around. I'm sure the president can work one up for you.

Aides on Tuesday defended Mr. Trump’s walk to the church, given that a small fire had been set in its basement during demonstrations over the weekend. “The president very much felt when he saw those images on Sunday night — that crossed a terrible line, that goes way beyond peaceful protesting,” Kellyanne Conway, his counselor, told reporters.

But she distanced him from the decisions on how to disperse the crowd. “Clearly, the president doesn’t know how law enforcement is handling his movement,” she said.

She's a big help. Clearly, the president doesn't know jack shit.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper says he was given no notice before President Donald Trump led him and other senior administration officials to St. John's Episcopal Church for a widely criticized photo opportunity.

"I thought I was going to do two things: to see some damage and to talk to the troops," Esper said Tuesday night in an exclusive interview with NBC News.

[...]

"I wanted to go out and thank these young men and women," Esper said.

[...]

Esper said he believed they were going to observe the vandalized bathroom in Lafayette Square, which is near the church.

"I didn't know where I was going," Esper said. "I wanted to see how much damage actually happened."

  NBC

The Secretary of Defense, and he didn't know where he was going. Pathetic.

Also, for this interview, he'll be getting his pink slip.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

I didn't notice you WERE defending us, Ron.

Just what he intended, I'm sure.

UPDATE:

UPDATE June 4:

That would sit better coming from someone other than Trump toadies.

UPDATE 6/5:  A "mistake"

UPDATE 9/9: THIS is what it was all about:

New first verse: Jesus wept.

Despicable.

P.S. Whoever said "Next he's going to claim to have written" the Bible wasn't wrong.

UPDATE 6/1/21: