Trump Fabricates Story of Hand-to-Hand Combat Between Troops and Child Gangsters in D.C.

President Donald Trump maintains that U S troops have engaged in hand-to-hand combat with young members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua on the streets of Washington D C But Joint Task Force District of Columbia the umbrella organization for the military occupation of the nation s capital says it never happened Trump s outlandish claim that National Guard members beat child gang members is one of numerous demonstrably false states peddled by the president concerning the deployment of military troops including that there is now no crime in the district It s part of a raft of lies Trump has used to paint America s cities as war-torn wastelands and justify urban military occupations These blatant falsehoods have increasingly drawn the ire of the federal judiciary You saw it in Washington Trump declared in an address to hundreds of top military officers late last month We had gangs of Tren de Aragua say kids And these military guys walk up to them and they treat them with disrespect and they just got pounded After twice more reiterating that U S troops pounded gang members Trump claimed the individuals were thrown into paddy wagons and taken back to their country JTF DC spokesperson Alexia Nal says that troops deployed on the streets of the capital have never engaged in combat with any suspected criminals Nope We re not allowed to she communicated The Intercept stating that organization members cannot put their hands on people One defense official speaking on the condition of anonymity called Trump s claim obvious bullshit Two more ruling body agents laughed when The Intercept brought the president s story to their attention Of syllabus not Not a chance one of them reported when petitioned if there was any possibility that Trump s account was based on a real happening Related How a Landlord and a Florida PR Firm Helped Trump Kick Off the Tren de Aragua Gang Panic President Trump s false and inflammatory justifications for deploying federal agents and National Guard troops to vibrant American cities may keep shifting but the truth does not Hina Shamsi the director of the American Civil Liberties Union s national measure project narrated The Intercept There s totally no exigency to justify deploying federal forces to Washington D C or any other city the president wrongly paints as a hellscape The White House did not respond to questions about the supposed assault of members of Tren de Aragua whether the supposed gang members were in fact children and if the president was suggesting members of Tren de Aragua were driven by paddy wagon to Venezuela Trump s fabricated tale of combat on the capital s streets are mirrored by his clearly false contends about crime in Washington since troops began their occupation of the city in August D C is now a no it s a free crime city We have no crime in D C It took me days Trump publicized early last month also referencing Tren de Aragua in those remarks Trump reiterated those boasts more just now We ve got no crime Trump claimed last week It took days to solve the predicament And we re going to do that in Chicago we re going to do that in Portland The remarks came only hours after D C s Metropolitan Police Department stated the casualties of two deadly shootings A JTF DC spokesperson refused to contradict her commander-in-chief We do not speculate she responded when appealed if crime in the district had been eliminated However JTF DC stays committed to the mobilization in the District until law and order is restored Regular announcements on the Metropolitan Police Department s website alone put the lie to Trump s boasts On Sunday October at approximately p m Seventh District officers responded to a account of a shooting in the block of th Street Southeast the victim was pronounced dead reads a MPD press release issued on Tuesday Of more than announcements made last week two chronicled homicides Yes there has been crime MPD spokesperson Ebony Major informed The Intercept I mean there s crime everywhere Related The Sinister Reason Trump Is Itching to Invoke the Insurrection Act In addition to Washington D C Trump has deployed or is attempting to deploy troops to Los Angeles Memphis New Orleans Chicago and Portland Oregon A federal judge ruled last month that the first of those deployments which is ongoing is illegal Courts have not long ago blocked the latter two occupations at least temporarily leaving activated federalized troops in a holding pattern They are not conducting any missions right now a Northern Command spokesperson communicated The Intercept on Tuesday referencing troops in Illinois and Oregon They re just on standby Trump has also threatened to send the military to Baltimore New York City Oakland St Louis San Francisco and Seattle to put down supposed rebellions and to aid law enforcement agencies despite falling crime numbers and pushback by local representatives W e re going to go city by city he revealed earlier this month We re going to have safe cities Hanna Homestead of the National Priorities Project a nonpartisan research group noted Trump was employing a standard playbook as his D C deployment burns through an estimated million per day This is nothing new she described The Intercept All authoritarian regimes frame ruthlessly oppressive social control and militarization as necessary for population safety Trump has justified his push to militarize urban America through gross hyperbole dog-whistle politics and the peddling of baseless lies Trump commented protesters in Los Angeles were animals and a foreign enemy calling the city a trash heap with entire neighborhoods under control of criminals He disclosed Washington D C s homicide rate is higher than the worst places on Earth Not only did Trump use older and larger statistics but even cherry-picking the content at least other cities across the world had higher homicide rates Trump also contends that Portland is war-ravaged and in a state of rebellion Portland has been on fire for years I really think that s really criminal insurrection Trump in the past few days communicated reporters Last month U S District Judge Charles Breyer ruled that the Trump administration s Los Angeles occupation is illegal noting that while troops were deployed ostensibly to quell a rebellion there was no rebellion nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law More in the past few days Breyer has been echoed by other federal judges ruling on court challenges to Trump s proposed military occupations of Portland and Chicago The President s determination was solely untethered to the facts U S District Judge Karin Immergut in the Oregon affair discovered noting that the protests in Portland were not a rebellion and did not pose a danger of a rebellion District Judge April Perry similarly wrote that the Trump administration s perceptions are not reliable and that she could not find reasonable help for a conclusion that there exists in Illinois a danger of rebellion Trump s indicates of hand-to-hand combat against Tren de Aragua in Washington follow persistent attempts to paint the gang as a bogeyman to justify illegal authoritarian efforts by the administration At the beginning of his second term the Trump administration claimed Tren de Aragua had invaded the United States allowing the cabinet to use the Alien Enemies Act s fast-track deportation of people it says belong to the gang Last month the th U S Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the executive from using the war-time law We conclude that the findings do not aid that an invasion or a predatory incursion has occurred wrote Judge Leslie Southwick Related License to Kill Trump s Extrajudicial Executions The Trump administration is also waging a secret war against mostly undisclosed enemies in the Caribbean without the consent of Congress The administration refuses to identify the designated terrorist organizations it is attacking in its strikes on purported drug-smuggling boats beyond suggests by the president that at least selected of those killed are Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists Trump has also had a long history of demonizing youth especially minority children From the very beginning of the D C deployment Trump has leaned on the notion that not only had the capital been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals but also specifically caravans of mass youth who rampage through city streets day and night This type of vilification by Trump goes back decades to the furor surrounding a group of Black and Latino boys who were wrongly accused of raping Trisha Meili a white woman jogger in New York s Central Park in Trump took out full-page ads in four newspapers calling for New York to BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY BRING BACK OUR POLICE The so-called Central Park Five were convicted but later exonerated and had their convictions vacated after a convicted serial rapist confessed to the crimes The confession was substantiated by DNA evidence New York City awarded the men million in a decade after specific of the men initially sued the city for how it handled the situation The five men sued Trump during last fall s presidential electoral contest campaign accusing him of making false and defamatory statements about them during the September debate in which he stated they pled guilty and killed a person Neither is true A federal judge rejected Trump s effort to dismiss a defamation lawsuit earlier this year Related Donald Trump s Ugly Attack on the Central Park Five Reflects All-Too-Common Attitude In his newspaper ads Trump painted New York City as a world ruled by the law of the streets as roving bands of wild criminals roam our neighborhoods dispensing their own vicious brand of twisted hatred on whomever they encounter In August Trump trotted out similar language to describe Washington Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals roving mobs of wild youth drugged-out maniacs he reported claiming D C had been overtaken by crime bloodshed bedlam and squalor and worse Experts communicated The Intercept that it was clear that Trump was banking on his fearmongering about cities to galvanize community endorsement and justify turning America into a full-fledged police state President Trump has slandered everyone from peaceful protesters to urban communities just trying to live their lives in his attempt to make the U S seem far more dangerous than it truly is Sara Haghdoosti the executive director of Win Without War narrated The Intercept His goal is simple the more people believe that violence is rampant the more power he can accrue under the guise of national assurance But people in this country can see his obvious lies for what they are which is why his authoritarian agenda gets less popular every day The post Trump Fabricates Story of Hand-to-Hand Combat Between Troops and Child Gangsters in D C appeared first on The Intercept