Trump Invokes 1807 Insurrection Act To Deal with Violence

June 2, 2020 (EIRNS)—President Donald Trump, in an evening statement in the Rose Garden on June 1, invoked the 1807 Insurrection Act, which allows the deployment of Federal troops in the case of “civil disorder, insurrection or rebellion.” He said that, in an afternoon call with governors, he had declared that if they fail to quell the rioters and looters, he will send in troops to do it.

About ten minutes before his presentation, the police, military police, and National Guard protecting the White House moved against the protesters in Lafayette Park. While it was unclear why at the time, the President said at the end of his statement that he was going to honor a sacred U.S. site—which meant St. John’s Episcopal Church, across from the White House on 16th Street, which had been set ablaze the night before by the anarchists, although the fire was put out without major damage.

He walked through Lafayette Park and stood before the boarded-up church, at which every U.S. President since James Madison had gone to worship, with a Bible in his hand, with Attorney General William Barr and others standing with him.

He declared that he was the “law and order President,” and repeated some of his words from his speech at the space launch on May 30, that the government will prosecute the murder of George Floyd to the fullest extent of the law, but that the anarchy is not about Floyd, but about those committed to insurrection, and they will be defeated. (See report, “Media Sewer Erupts against Trump’s Photo Op: It Is All Security-Stripping Defamation” in this issue.)