Esper Against Invoking Insurrection Act | Talking Points Memo

Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Wednesday broke from President Trump by opposing invoking the Insurrection Act as nationwide protests and unrest mount following the death of George Floyd.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1312399

But then how:

Will the bathrooms of the nation be visited?

Peaceful protesters be teargassed?

Journalists be assaulted / arrested?

Houses of Worship be invaded?

Civil rights be trampled?

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Protests do not constitute insurrection. Insurrection is what the Bundys and their militia supporters do.

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Esper contradicted Trump[…]

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…
How will overtime pay be earned by the cops?

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I wonder if the Feds get overtime. I have no idea.

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Why Esper jumped:


[couldn’t resist.]

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By the way, did you know that those were not helicopters buzzing the DC protesters. They were “rotary aviation assets”. “DoDspeak.”

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Yes, non-exempt employees (generally GS9 and below) can get overtime.

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Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Wednesday broke from President Trump by opposing invoking the Insurrection Act

Better.

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In fairness, it IS totally plausible that no one understands what IMPOTUS is going to do next.

Including IMPOTUS…

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Funny how the Ministry of Disinformation hasn’t quashed this type of fake news…

With Trump facing a challenging reelection campaign in five months, Republican voters are far more likely to say the country is headed in the right direction. Nearly two-thirds, 65 percent, say the country is going in the right direction, versus 9 percent of Democrats and 23 percent of independents.

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Mark, didn’t your parents tell you as a teenager not to get into your friends’ cars unless you knew where they were going, what you would be doing there, and how you were going to get home afterwards? They didn’t?? We need to have a talk with them.

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The next morning, a local journalist regurgitated an anonymous statement from the US Park Police: There was no tear gas. Reporters on the ground and local priests countered that narrative, but the Republicans stuck with it. Some even went so far as to claim that time does not move forward. Washington, DC, like many other cities, had implemented a curfew that was set to begin at 7:00pm. The protesters were tear gassed at 6:35. Nonetheless, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) knew better, insisting that the protesters deliberately stayed out past curfew in order to get tear gassed.
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The CDC has defined tear gas as any one of a number of irritant compounds delivered into crowds to disperse them and tear gas is the collective term for these compounds.

The administration is simply using narrow semantic legerdemain and over-punctiliousness to deflect the argument over outcome to an argument over process and some in the Media, notably Peter Alexander, have fallen for it.

This is similar to mass shootings about automatic weapons where the argument concerning the outcome is diverted to one of types of automatic rifles and that lack of knowledge of such disqualifies one from arguing about the loss of life.

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When your total motivation is impulse, comprehension goes home alone.

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Impeached, Impotent, Impulsed.

Impressive!

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And the Confederate South during the US Civil War.

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If Esper is sacked, there are a bunch of hacks available.

“Acting”

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My bet is that Pompeo is really leading the DoD. I also bet Esper will be out in a few days.

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