AG Barr on news coverage of last weekend’s violence in Lafayette Square:
— Kerri Kupec DOJ (@KerriKupecDOJ) June 7, 2020
“I didn't hear about the fact that there were 150 law enforcement officers injured and many taken to the hospital with concussions. So it wasn't a peaceful protest.”https://t.co/Y1Fbr0sPQr
AG Barr is like a bulldozer. Never loses his cool. Argues from logic, evidence, precedent. Keeps a 360 degree perspective, taking into account pros and cons, short term consequences and long term consequences.
And patiently and politely answering the badgering, uninformed, misinformed, hostile questions of someone who is trying to score a point, not seek elucidation, Margaret Brennan.
From my perspective, she fails dramatically, shows her hand, and embarrasses herself. I am confident others already committed to overthrow will thrill to her speaking truth to power.
There are two related twists to this though that make it especially intriguing.
She wants to argue that 1) the protests were mere peaceful demonstrations and that there was no danger, 2) the police overreacted, and 3) that the clearance of Lafayette park occurred to facilitate a presidential photo op.
She plays a minute or two of video to try and score an emotional point but there is little way to see what is going on in the video as peaceful. At best it is ambiguous.
I was struck though by her reliance on false information. She kept trying to introduce the idea that the police tear-gassed the crowd, an idea which has been rebutted as soon as it was propagated. You get the sense that she understands the difference between tear-gassing versus pepper pellets and smoke canisters (which were used but which are not chemical and are much less likely to cause harm than tear gas) and yet she keeps trying to introduce tear gas into the conversation even though it seems she knows that was not what was used. Barr keeps politely correcting her.
She also kept representing that the demonstrations were peaceful and Barr keeps coming back to the facts, X number of police injured. Y number of police hospitalized. Bricks thrown, inflammable liquids sprayed on the police. This is where the two movie contrast is starkest. She is trying to represent a repressive and out-of-control and unprovoked police response and Barr keeps telling her that she is wrong. She falls back on her three CBS colleagues who were in the square and how they told her there was no warning and there was tear-gas. Barr keeps correcting her. It is the only point where he comes close to demonstrating irritation. She is offering "People who don't like you say . . . " and he is responding "I was there and saw bricks being thrown."
Just fascinating to me to see a mainstream media outlet going all out to try and create a story when all the facts point the other way. If there were only the networks and the Washington Post there, it might fly. But with all the internet channels and blogs, all the uploaded video from private citizens, the discrepancy between the skewed or untrue story that Brennan desperately wants to tell and the facts that everyone else can readily access, it is no longer feasible for the old mainstream media to sustain the narratives they wish to push.
And Barr just sits there patiently, correcting the pattering untruths, adding the information which everyone else knows and Brennan is choosing to ignore, providing context and nuance. We are fortunate to have such a citizen willing to do such an unpleasant job.
In a last desperate moment, she has a particular wording where it seemed like she was effectively saying, you can see how the way that we represented this to the public might make the public call into question just what happened. It comes across almost as if she is irritated that their deception has been rebuffed.
But those are the wages of sending in a young Ben Rhodes journalist to interview someone with great knowledge and experience.
Again, fascinating to see one interview which will almost certainly be interpreted in diametrically opposite ways.
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