Donald Trump has dived into the far-right attempt to turn Ashli Babbitt into a martyr. Yes, Babbitt was killed by Capitol Police as she tried to enter the Speaker’s Lobby during the attack on the U.S. Capitol, climbing through a broken window just feet from where members of Congress were being taken to safety. Yes, Trump has repeatedly endorsed police violence against protesters—but those are protesters he doesn’t like. Babbitt was at the Capitol, was storming the Capitol and trying to physically get to members of Congress, for Trump. So he’s decided she’s a worthy cause to take up.
“The person that shot Ashli Babbitt—boom, right through the head,” Trump said Wednesday, incorrectly—Babbitt was shot in the neck or shoulder. “Just, boom. There was no reason for that. And why isn’t that person being opened up, and why isn’t that being studied? They’ve already written it off. They said that case is closed. If that were the opposite, that case would be going on for years and years, and it would not be pretty.”
”There was no reason for that.” Again, we are talking about someone who was part of a violent attack on Congress, and who was within sight of members of Congress at the time she was shot while climbing through a broken window.
Trump’s implication, of course, is that had Babbitt been a Black Lives Matter protester, the officer would not have been cleared of wrongdoing. In reality, the bar for prosecution of a police officer is always extremely high—that is, in fact, one of the things people on the left have protested for years—and “officer shot a member of a mob that was breaking through windows and doors in an attempt to attack Congress, after she had broken multiple laws and repeatedly been ordered to stop” is, in the U.S. criminal justice system, a no-brainer non-prosecution. We’ve repeatedly seen officers not face charges for killing unarmed Black people going about their daily business. So no, if that were the opposite, that case would not be going on for years and years.
And, of course, if that were the “opposite,” where “opposite” means people calling for Black lives to matter rather than a mob battering down the doors of the Capitol and assaulting officers, Trump would not want the officer charged. He’s repeatedly cheered on police violence when he saw it as aligned with his values, and The Washington Post’s Philip Bump has the receipts.
On May 29, 2020, as protests over the murder of George Floyd were staged outside the White House, if protesters had so much as breached the outer fence, Trump said “they would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen. That’s when people would have been really badly hurt, at least.” Imagine what he’d have been calling for if those protesters had been through the outer fence, through the front door, and breaking down the door of the room next to where he was.
But Trump’s calls for police violence haven’t just been about his own personal safety. Trump said of the Floyd protests in Minneapolis, threatening to send in federal troops, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Behind the scenes, he reportedly said “Just shoot them” more than once. “That’s the way it has to be,” Trump said after U.S. marshals killed the suspect in the killing of a Trump supporter. “There has to be retribution when you have crime like this.”
It makes total sense, in Trump’s twisted psyche, to become an Ashli Babbitt cheerleader. She was at the U.S. Capitol to try to forcibly keep him in office, after all. What may be more surprising, and shows how Trump’s power as a leader is fading, is that he was just jumping on a bandwagon. In February, Fox News host Tucker Carlson was at the leading edge of the effort to turn Babbitt into a martyr, apparently spurred by the observation that she had been a fan of his show. But even Carlson’s campaign didn’t really get going until April, after the officer was cleared of wrongdoing.
The campaign jumped from Fox News to Congress in May, when Rep. Paul Gosar started fixating on Babbitt, celebrating her on Memorial Day weekend in words originally written about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. During congressional hearings in May and June, Gosar framed Babbitt as an innocent victim, demanding to know the name of the officer who “executed” her, claiming the officer did so after “lying in wait.” By early July, Gosar was fundraising off his claims—and, around the same time, Trump jumped on board with a four-word email to supporters saying, simply, “Who killed Ashli Babbitt?”
Republicans are committed to downplaying Jan. 6, calling it “a normal tourist visit” and refusing to talk to the officers who were there that day and want Congress to understand how brutal it was. “It wasn’t an insurrection,” they say, with 21 House Republicans voting against honoring the officers who protected them. Turning Ashli Babbitt into an innocent victim is part of that project. And the fact that they’re trying it despite the videos clearly showing her as part of the mob bashing in windows and threatening police officers is a marker of how much falsehood Republicans think they can get away with.
“The person that shot Ashli Babbitt—boom, right through the head,” Trump said Wednesday, incorrectly—Babbitt was shot in the neck or shoulder. “Just, boom. There was no reason for that. And why isn’t that person being opened up, and why isn’t that being studied? They’ve already written it off. They said that case is closed. If that were the opposite, that case would be going on for years and years, and it would not be pretty.”
”There was no reason for that.” Again, we are talking about someone who was part of a violent attack on Congress, and who was within sight of members of Congress at the time she was shot while climbing through a broken window.
Trump’s implication, of course, is that had Babbitt been a Black Lives Matter protester, the officer would not have been cleared of wrongdoing. In reality, the bar for prosecution of a police officer is always extremely high—that is, in fact, one of the things people on the left have protested for years—and “officer shot a member of a mob that was breaking through windows and doors in an attempt to attack Congress, after she had broken multiple laws and repeatedly been ordered to stop” is, in the U.S. criminal justice system, a no-brainer non-prosecution. We’ve repeatedly seen officers not face charges for killing unarmed Black people going about their daily business. So no, if that were the opposite, that case would not be going on for years and years.
And, of course, if that were the “opposite,” where “opposite” means people calling for Black lives to matter rather than a mob battering down the doors of the Capitol and assaulting officers, Trump would not want the officer charged. He’s repeatedly cheered on police violence when he saw it as aligned with his values, and The Washington Post’s Philip Bump has the receipts.
On May 29, 2020, as protests over the murder of George Floyd were staged outside the White House, if protesters had so much as breached the outer fence, Trump said “they would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen. That’s when people would have been really badly hurt, at least.” Imagine what he’d have been calling for if those protesters had been through the outer fence, through the front door, and breaking down the door of the room next to where he was.
But Trump’s calls for police violence haven’t just been about his own personal safety. Trump said of the Floyd protests in Minneapolis, threatening to send in federal troops, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Behind the scenes, he reportedly said “Just shoot them” more than once. “That’s the way it has to be,” Trump said after U.S. marshals killed the suspect in the killing of a Trump supporter. “There has to be retribution when you have crime like this.”
It makes total sense, in Trump’s twisted psyche, to become an Ashli Babbitt cheerleader. She was at the U.S. Capitol to try to forcibly keep him in office, after all. What may be more surprising, and shows how Trump’s power as a leader is fading, is that he was just jumping on a bandwagon. In February, Fox News host Tucker Carlson was at the leading edge of the effort to turn Babbitt into a martyr, apparently spurred by the observation that she had been a fan of his show. But even Carlson’s campaign didn’t really get going until April, after the officer was cleared of wrongdoing.
The campaign jumped from Fox News to Congress in May, when Rep. Paul Gosar started fixating on Babbitt, celebrating her on Memorial Day weekend in words originally written about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. During congressional hearings in May and June, Gosar framed Babbitt as an innocent victim, demanding to know the name of the officer who “executed” her, claiming the officer did so after “lying in wait.” By early July, Gosar was fundraising off his claims—and, around the same time, Trump jumped on board with a four-word email to supporters saying, simply, “Who killed Ashli Babbitt?”
Republicans are committed to downplaying Jan. 6, calling it “a normal tourist visit” and refusing to talk to the officers who were there that day and want Congress to understand how brutal it was. “It wasn’t an insurrection,” they say, with 21 House Republicans voting against honoring the officers who protected them. Turning Ashli Babbitt into an innocent victim is part of that project. And the fact that they’re trying it despite the videos clearly showing her as part of the mob bashing in windows and threatening police officers is a marker of how much falsehood Republicans think they can get away with.