Donald Trump Announces 'Surge' Against US Cities In Operation Infinite Desperation

The fight for effective b-roll continues.

Having finally found a talking point that gets Fox News viewers hard, Donald Trump pledged Wednesday that he would "surge" federal agents to create war-torn areas in American cities like Chicago and Albuquerque. (Why Albuquerque? Who knows! Maybe Bugs Bunny reported a left turn there.) Trump delivered his White House announcement as if he were sending the Marines to evacuate US citizens from embattled foreign lands. Which big American cities are, if their mayors and voters are mostly Democrats.

“Today I’m announcing a surge of federal law enforcement into American communities plagued by violent crime. We’ll… https: //t.co/y7ZhwaKKoH

— ABC News (@ABC News) 1595448338.0 

Trump offered a pretense of justification for the deployment of hundreds of federal agents, using the time-tested rhetorical technique of lying . See if you can catch all the lies!

In recent weeks there has been a radical movement to defund, dismantle and dissolve our police departments. Extreme politicians have joined this anti-police crusade and relentlessly vilified our law enforcement heroes. [...] The effort to shut down policing in their own communities has led to a shocking explosion of shootings, killings, murders and heinous crimes of violence.

This bloodshed must end, this bloodshed will end. Today I'm announcing a surge of federal law enforcement into American communities plagued by violent crime. We'll work every single day to restore public safety, protect our nation's children, and bring violent perpetrators to justice. We've been doing it, and you can see what's happening all around the country. We've just started this process, and frankly, we have no choice but to get involved.

Let's go through this really quickly:

1) Nobody's trying to make police just go away starting next week. The calls to defund police are all about building up social services that deal with problems that shouldn't be a matter for law enforcement in the first place.

2) Show me these "extremist" police-hating politicians, please. They probably said something like police are out of control, or that there's systemic racism in policing.

3) As the AP notes , "criminal justice experts say a spike in violence in some cities defies easy explanation" — more on that in a moment.

4) There's the tell! "We have no choice" in Trumpspeak always means "This is some shit I think will go over well with my voters." We had "no choice" but to ban Muslims from the US after a US-born man shot up the Pulse nightclub. We also have had no choice but to build a wall Mexico didn't pay for, to repeal Obamacare, to increase military spending, to start a trade war with China, and to build more nuclear weapons , including the top secret "super-duper missile."

Glad we could help!

Now, a bit more on the "president's" contention that a spike in crime in cities like New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia was caused by Black Lives Matter demonstrations against police brutality. There really isn't any evidence, but it plays well on Fox News. And the AP points out that

Criminal justice experts seeking answers have pointed to the unprecedented moment: a pandemic that has killed over 140,000 Americans, historic unemployment, a mass reckoning over race and police brutality, intense stress and even the weather. Compared with other years, crime in 2020 is down overall.

The federal agents being sent to Chicago and Albuquerque will supposedly not be deployed to "defend" federal property like the unidentifiable soldiercops who have been busting heads in Portland, Oregon. Rather, they're supposed to be attached to local police task forces to fight violent crime, according to the Chicago Tribune, which reports Attorney General William Barr said the agents would

be engaged in "classic crime-fighting" such as investigating homicides, gangs, gun crime and drug trafficking organizations. The new agents will include members of the FBI, U.S. Marshals Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Homeland Security, among others.

Those Homeland Security cops, however, will include officers from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the investigatory arm of Immigration and Customs enforcement. They aren't your local crime-fighters at all; they usually investigate international drug and human trafficking, not domestic murders and assaults.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot briefly spoke to Trump on the phone after the press conference, and said in a statement that as long as the feds are actually limited to backing up local police and not busting heads of nonviolent protesters like in Portland:

If those agents are here to actually work in partnership on support of gun violence and violent cases, plugging into existing infrastructure of federal agents, not trying to play police in our streets, then that's something different.

Lightfoot also stated that all the federal officers' activities would be "coordinated through the US Attorney's office" and added that "if there is any deviation from what has been announced, we will pursue all available legal options to protect Chicagoans."

The "surge" is supposed to be an expansion of an existing joint local-federal task force in Kansas City, Missouri, where federal officers were sent after violence that included the shooting death of a 4-year-old boy who was sleeping in his home. It's being called "Operation Legend," after the boy's name, LeGend Taliferro. That's apparently different from the Portland head-busting project, which Politico reports is connected to a Homeland Security mission called — and we swear we are not making this up — "Operation Diligent Valor."

See? Totally different things! We just hope Trump knows they're separate operations ( if they actually are ), and doesn't start complaining that he wants to see more Portland-style footage coming from Chicago and Albuquerque. After all, there are campaign ads to make, and that's the whole point of Operation Scarier Than Caravans On The Border. 

If this really is a "surge," we should point out that instead of having a Gen. David Petraeus in charge, Trump's anonymous stormtroopers are being sent out by (Acting) Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and his top fake assistant Ken Cuccinelli, whose official title is "Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Deputy Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security."

Still, maybe Trump should pay attention to the implications of his "surge" metaphor. If it does follow the Iraq script, some initial success in reducing violence through Operation Radicalize Suburban Mothers could be followed by the rise of ISIS after the troops pull out.

[ Chicago Tribune / AP / Politico / US Army Photo by SPC Ronald Shaw Jr.]

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