June 7, 2020

Trump Pulls Out National Guard After Thousands Protest in Washington, DC

Protesters next to a National Guard Humvee in Washington, DC, last week. Samuel Corum/Getty

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This morning, as protesters were expected to hit the streets of the nation’s capital for a 10th day of demonstrations against racist police violence, President Donald Trump tweeted that he would withdraw the National Guard from Washington, DC, asserting that “everything is under perfect control.”

Trump, who has always been obsessed by crowd size (and false claims about them), insisted that “far fewer protesters showed up” than anticipated. It’s unclear how many people he thought would show up to in the city and in the newly-renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza a few blocks from the White House.

The Washington Post reported that more than 10,000 people marched in Washington, DC, on Saturday. As my colleague Will Peischel reported, the peaceful demonstration felt less like the riots condemned by Trump and more like a summer block party.

Trump’s decision earlier last week to dispatch the National Guard and unidentified law enforcement personnel to contain largely peaceful protests marked an escalation in force as demonstrations unfolded across the country in response to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. More than 5,000 National Guard troops were called in, including soldiers from DC and 11 states. On Friday, Mayor Muriel Bowser asked the president to remove all “military presence from our city.”

She also asked the president to withdraw “extraordinary federal law enforcement,” noting that the presence of “unidentified federal personnel patrolling the streets of Washington, DC pose both safety and national security risks.” Trump has not said whether he would withdraw the unidentified officers that Mother Jones reporter Dan Friedman spotted on the streets last week, and who were still out in force yesterday.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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