Tag: riots

The Feds Are Still the Jackbooted Thugs We Were Warned About

Federal law-enforcement agents brutally enforcing the government’s will against a segment of the population on the outs with the current administration are “jack-booted government thugs,” the National Rifle Association (NRA) charged in communications with its membership. Questioned by the press, the gun-rights group’s Wayne LaPierre defended the heated words, saying “they are a pretty close description of what’s happening in the real world.”

But that was in 1995, and the federal agents in question were (very much still) out-of-control agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Now booted-and-helmeted Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents battle protesters in Portland over the protests of local officials, adding fuel to the fire of violent demonstrations there and in a growing number of other cities. Yet the NRA and other past critics of federal overreach are silent.

The NRA’s tough 1995 language came at a time of increasing government restrictions on self-defense rights, including the 1994 “assault weapons” ban. Gun opponents pushed hard at the state and federal level to limit the types of firearms that Americans could own.

Enforcement of restrictive laws brought complaints about the government’s methods. As early as 1982, even before federal misconduct at Ruby Ridge and Waco, a report by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution concluded that “enforcement tactics made possible by current federal firearms laws are constitutionally, legally, and practically reprehensible.”

That was the climate in which the NRA wrote in a fund-raising letter that “not too long ago, it was unthinkable for federal agents wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms to attack law-abiding citizens.”

Twenty-five years later, “heavily armed men in camouflage fatigues advanc[ed] in a skirmish line along downtown Portland’s Main Street at 2 a.m., firing tear gas at fleeing crowds,” The Oregonian reports. “Federal officers clearing out nearby Lownsdale Square, yanking shields from some people and striking others with batons. Uniformed government agents pulling at least two people into unmarked vans off city streets for questioning.”

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10 Big Fat Lies You’re Being Told About The Portland Riots

Democrats have fully pivoted on the nightly Portland riots. They’ve gone all-in on blaming the riots on President Trump thus allying themselves with the antifa and Black Lives Matter anarchist and communist mobs. Instead of black bloc balaclavas or masks, the politicians have donned the cloak of civil libertarianism. In doing so, they make a mockery of it.

Democrats, so far as I can find, have never denounced the violent mobs, though New York Governor Andrew Cuomo once wagged a finger at George Floyd rioters while simultaneously explaining that it wasn’t really their fault because “income inequality” led to violence. Indeed, the only remonstrance issued was over people burning down black-owned businesses – their “own house” as he put it, because burning your own stuff “never makes sense.” As denunciations go, it was a rambling nothing-burger. Atlanta’s mayor voiced similar disgust with the arsonists and looters.

In fact, mayors, governors, and prosecutors have fallen all over themselves to support the violent mobs in Seattle, New York, St. Louis, Washington, D.C., and, of course, Portland, often conflating the “mostly peaceful” protesters upset with the killing of George Floyd – remember him? – with the ones looting Louis Vuitton, tearing down statues of George Washington, and trying to burn down federal buildings.

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan ceded a section of the fancy Capitol Hill neighborhood to the mob. She handed over a police precinct to the mob. Two murders, gunshot wounds, assaults, and rapes took place at her pet mob’s little “summer of love” squat. She’s never apologized.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey gave over a police precinct to the mob. Police officers inside thought they’d die that night and if they’d stayed they would have. When rioters weren’t boosting free stuff from the Target, looters and rioters were spectating the conflagration they’d started at the precinct with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. The mayor later asked President Trump for money to help rebuild it. Trump said hell no.

But this is an election year and time is short. The mobs are deployed to cause chaos and misdirection, as they were in Portland and elsewhere in the months leading up and after the 2016 presidential election. They are cracking heads and cold-cocking Trump rally-goers who dare bring a contra-narrative to one of their riots.

Far from denouncing the violent and destructive nightly arsons and assaults, Democrats embrace the riots to denounce President Trump. They point to the mobs of concerned citizens who have been impelled, catapulted from their spot at the tattoo parlor to join the mob in the streets because how-dare-Trump-send-police-to-defend-a-federal-building that the left is obsessed with bringing down.

It’s a real-time exercise in psy-ops. It’s gaslighting writ large. But they believe you’re dumb enough to believe it.

Instead, follow along on these ten big lies the Left wants you to believe about the Portland riots and learn something.

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Radio host mocks Trump by claiming Seattle is peaceful, then rioters torched his apartment building

Seattle radio host and Twitter-based criminal defense advocate Paul Gallant “dunked” on President Donald Trump last month by denying that the riots are violent, then the radio host was scored on by rioters who set fire to his apartment. Now he’s taking up arms.

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