Caption this photo

[historia]

Question for debate: What is going on in this photo? What message does it send?

[Tcg]

Therefore the crowd were not pushed back only for a photo op.

One need only ask one question to understand the Donald's motivation.

Why was he motivated to take this photo only when protesters would need to be violently removed?

Stated differently:

Why didn't the Donald have this picture taken two weeks prior when a stroll across the street would have been uneventful?


Tcg

[AgnosticBoy]

Before the cops even moved up to the protestors, you see bottles on the floor right in front of them. Did you consider that those were thrown, as well?

Lots of things are possible. But the Park Service Police themselves said that protestors started throwing projectiles at 6:33 PM, which corresponds to when the police began pushing forward, not before.

What the evidence shows, then, is that a handful of protestors momentarily threw a few water bottles in response to the police starting their dispersal action, which other protestors then quelled rather quickly.

You want to paint a picture of the protestors throwing bottles in response to being pushed back by the police but that isn't the case if you refer back to my video evidence. My video evidence shows the time for the video coverage. It is before 6:33pm; in fact it's at 6:03pm that we see bottles flying. Remember you said the push by police started at 6:33 p.m., so my video which shows bottles flying at 6:03pm is clearly before the time any use of force by police.

In fact, why assume that the bottles started flying at 6:03 p.m. and not BEFORE that? It would be more reasonable to consider that 6:03 was only when a camera first captured a projectile as opposed to being the first time a projectile was thrown. This should be considered because it is very possible for projectile to be thrown while not being captured on camera. That is why we see bottles right in front of the police officers even when they're standing at a good distance away from the protesters according to your video.

we can not conflate moving up to protestors with dispersing them

When police disperse a large crowd, they usually don't do so in a single, continuous movement. Rather, they often employ the tactic we see here, where they push forward, stop, and then wait for a time before moving forward again.

The police never started dispersing anyone at the point that my video shows a bottle being thrown. Again, my video shows a bottle being thrown at 6:03 p.m. According to you, the dispersal didn't start till around 6:33 PM. That's a good 30 minute gap. I doubt the police would start the dispersal process and then wait 30 minutes to make the next move.

My point shows two things:
- the protesters were not always peaceful.
- the bottles were not thrown in reaction two dispersing the protest. We can also say that the dispersal was in reaction to bottles being thrown.

Again, this seriously calls into question the White House's claim that, in response to the crowd becoming "increasingly unruly" and throwing projectiles, the police had "no other choice than, in that moment, to act and make sure that they were safe" by dispersing the crowd with tear gas and rubber bullets. The protestors momentarily threw a few water bottles. The police then spend the next seven minutes clearing out fully half the protest area without resorting to the use of munitions. Only at that point do they choose to deploy tear gas and other weapons on the protestors.

Again, there is a 30-minute Gap between the time that the dispersal started and from the time that my video shows bottles being thrown. And you're also assuming that bottles weren't thrown even before that.

[AgnosticBoy]

Therefore the crowd were not pushed back only for a photo op.

One need only ask one question to understand the Donald's motivation.

Why was he motivated to take this photo only when protesters would need to be violently removed?

Stated differently:

Why didn't the Donald have this picture taken two weeks prior when a stroll across the street would have been uneventful?


Tcg

I don't speculate on motivations. All of my thinking comes from statements of actual White House officials and video evidence. These are officials that would have been in a position to know what was going on, the planning ,etc.

White House officials say that the reason they cleared the crowd is because projectiles were being thrown. My video shows that. Perhaps the White House won't admit that Trump's photo op was involved, but I don't find that to be enough of a reason to discard everything else they said, especially when video evidence corroborates it.

[Tcg]

Therefore the crowd were not pushed back only for a photo op.

One need only ask one question to understand the Donald's motivation.

Why was he motivated to take this photo only when protesters would need to be violently removed?

Stated differently:

Why didn't the Donald have this picture taken two weeks prior when a stroll across the street would have been uneventful?


Tcg

I don't speculate on motivations.

Actually you did so on your very first post in this thread:

My personal take is that it's possible that Trump wanted a photo op.

Tcg

[The Barbarian]

In retrospect, even Trump's own people admitted that using troops to clear the area so he could have a photo op waving a Bible at a church was dumb and hurt him when people realized what he had done.

Often, evil is its own punishment.

President Donald Trump faced widespread criticism after posing in front of St. John's Church in D.C., a historic Episcopal place of worship, holding a bible aloft—a photo op made possible after police in riot gear deployed tear gas to clear peaceful protesters from the area.

The leader of Episcopal Church in the U.S., Bishop Michael Curry, condemned the move in a statement.

This evening, the President of the United States stood in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, lifted up a bible, and had pictures of himself taken. In so doing, he used a church building and the Holy Bible for partisan political purposes. This was done in a time of deep hurt and pain in our country, and his action did nothing to help us or to heal us.

The bible teaches us that “God is love.” Jesus of Nazareth taught, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The prophet Micah taught that the Lord requires us to “do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.”

The bible the President held up and the church that he stood in front of represent the values of love, of justice, of compassion, and of a way to heal our hurts.
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/socie ... statement/

The nation’s highest-ranking military officer apologized Thursday for accompanying President Donald Trump to a photo opportunity at a Washington church after authorities violently moved protesters from an area outside the White House.

“I should not have been there,” Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a video commencement address to National Defense University.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/11/george- ... trump.html

That played no small part in the fact that Donald Trump is the first modern republican president to lose the military vote. But it damaged him with Americans generally.

[nashandra]

Indeed, a troubling photo even at this point. I think it will be one of the pictures defining his legacy and presidency. There are many pictures from our recent past that are extremely old, but really interesting to analyze or even get to transform them from black and white to color photos. There is software online that allows you to do it for free nowadays. I thought it was only used from professionals in the film making industry, but since I can do it myself I might give a try to a few World War 2 pictures and see the results.

[AgnosticBoy]

Question for debate: What is going on in this photo? What message does it send?

It took a while, but a government investigation reveals that the police did not clear out the protestors because of Trump's photo op.