Trump's attempt at iconic photo created another crisis. [View all]
' President Donald Trump, besieged by a long season of crisis, wanted to create an iconic moment.
Less than one hour after federal authorities forcibly removed peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square, the president emerged with military leaders from the fortified White House - the air still thick with the acrid smell of tear gas - to pose for pictures holding a Bible in front of a historical church.
The moment was indeed iconic. But it spawned yet another crisis for the president.
The succession of images from Lafayette Square on June 1 has reverberated for nearly two weeks - a harrowing cable news split-screen that now has enduring consequences for Trump and outsize symbolism for a nation broken after yet another black man died in the custody of police.
So indelible were the pictures that night outside the White House that Lafayette Square has come to represent Trump's inability to meet the moment. The layers of black fencing erected to close the park and surrounding streets became Fortress White House - a physical manifestation of the president's distance from Americans' cries for racial justice. The bold, yellow "BLACK LIVES MATTER" lettering on 16th Street became a declaration of resistance visible from the sky. And the name Lafayette Square itself became a shorthand for so much of what many see as wrong in America.
"History picks these moments. It picked the march on Selma. It picked Bull Connor sending dogs against children. It picked the burning child from Vietnam," said Stuart Stevens, a longtime Republican strategist and ad maker who works with the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group.
With his triumphal stride through the square to historical St. John's Episcopal Church, Trump had hoped to appear strong and dominant, and to dispel the narrative of him hiding in the secured White House bunker during evening protests outside. Demanding a show of force, he sought to make the nation's capital a shining example of how to control the streets amid racial unrest.
Instead, the photo op proved calamitous.
The episode caused an extraordinary breach between the commander in chief and the military. The Pentagon's top general, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley, and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, both of whom flanked Trump that day, scrambled to distance themselves from the spectacle. And a succession of former officers, including Jim Mattis, Trump's first defense secretary, excoriated the president.
The outrage was similar within religious communities. Washington's top episcopaland Catholic bishops each condemned Trump for using the Bible as a prop in what they described as an incendiary display outside a house of worship.
The episode magnified many characteristics of the Trump presidency. At a period of national turmoil, Trump appeared self-indulgent and overtly political as he posed for photos that his aides quickly turned into a propaganda-style montage.'>>>
https://www.thehour.com/news/article/Trump-s-attempt-at-iconic-photo-created-another-15338490.php
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