Tammy Duckworth: Trump's Use Of Military Against Protesters Is 'Disgusting'
WASHINGTON ― Sen. Tammy Duckworth flew Black Hawk helicopters to fight al Qaeda in Iraq and nearly lost her life doing so. Now, President Donald Trump is using military helicopters ― along with tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades ― to intimidate Americans protesting racism and police brutality outside the White House.
Duckworth is livid.
“The military is not to be used against Americans,” the Illinois Democrat said in an interview Tuesday. “He is perverting, at best, the role of the military. And he’s destroying what they stand for and the honor with which they serve. It is disgusting to me.”
Trump had military helicopters fly over protesters this week from as low as 100 feet above the ground. He also had protesters tear-gassed in Lafayette Park so he could walk out of the White House and do a photo-op holding a Bible in front of a church. (The White House has disputed that the tear gas was tear gas, but it was tear gas.) Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, in military fatigues, joined the president in that photo-op.
That was profoundly disappointing for Duckworth.
“What were they doing there?” she asked. “For a photo-op in front of a church that has nothing to do with the military? Where people are talking about excessive use of police force, what were military leaders doing there?”
Duckworth had more choice words for Esper and Milley at a Senate press event earlier Tuesday: They were “walking along like lap dogs behind a draft-dodging wannabe tinpot dictator. ... How dare you politicize our military.”
After taking heat for the photo-op, and after one Pentagon adviser resigned over it in disgust, Esper said Wednesday that he didn’t know he was going to a photo-op. Milley hasn’t said anything about it, though a senior Defense official said Wednesday he also didn’t intend to participate in a photo-op.
Even if they didn’t intend to take part in a completely...
