“The Message of Trump’s Embrace of Ashli Babbitt Martyrdom”

What right are you referring to? The officer hasn't been charged so there's no public record to release. It's not a cover up, Don Jr, it's called how stuff works in reality.

 

Trump knows how to keep his cult salivating. In addition to playing a part in making that idiot Babbit into a martyr for his holy cause, he is praising the violent mob, calling them "tremendous people," claiming they were peaceful, and so on. That's some change in messaging from what he was saying in the days and weeks following the event. As ever, he just revises history for his followers in a way that would make George Orwell blush, based on whatever is convenient to him and his bottom line, to his maintaining control over these rabid morons and keeping their hard-earned money flowing to him in the form of donations.

Try him for treason and execute him, the rotten old bastard. January 6th was his Bier Hall Putsch if not his Reichstag fire, and he's not done yet.

 

You are in good company with that comparison...

SNIP
Shortly before the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, told aides the US was facing a “Reichstag moment” because Donald Trump was preaching “the gospel of the Führer”, according to an eagerly awaited book about Trump’s last year in office.
ENDSNIP

https://www.yahoo.com/news/top-us-general-warned-reichstag-202725233.html

 

Apropos:

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”

― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark​

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/632474-i-have-a-foreboding-of-an-america-in-my-children-s

 

She had stuck her leg through a broken window in the door. Maybe an arm too, I'm not sure. She clearly was not through the door. When she was hit, she didn't fall into the room; she fell back away from the door.

I don't agree. Some possible options:
1) Get her attention, and let her see the drawn weapon, and give her a warning, i.e. "Get back! Get back or I'll shoot!"
2) Use strikes or pepper spray to drive her back,
3) Fire a warning shot or shots into the floor,
4) Fire deliberately low at the door. 9 mm or 40 caliber bullets will pass through a wooden door. Shots like that could wound a person in the ankle or feet.

I believe this shooting was "scrutinized" through a political lens.

They did have choices. Drawing a firearm and shooting it are two separate decisions, and they are made for two related but distinctly different reasons. Ordinarily, we would never accept that excuse: "I drew my gun, so I had no choice but to use it." Do you have any idea how many people I could have shot during my career using that as an excuse?

It doesn't matter. The use of lethal force by police may only be used against a specific person who is personally in the act of some sort of assault that is likely to cause death or serious physical injury.

That is a shockingly low bar for the justification for the use of lethal force by police.

There is no evidence that she had communicated a threat to anyone. And even if she did, that also is a low bar for the justification of the use of deadly force by police. Do you have any idea how many threats a police officer hears during his/her career? How about citizens? If someone makes a verbal threat to a citizen, shall we justify that citizen drawing a gun and shooting the person dead?

So you approve of police shooting people in a crowd "to send a message the crowd will understand"? Would you apply the same standard to BLM rioters or Antifa rioters? Just shoot a few to send a message?

He obviously fired at her upper torso. People are not static paper targets where you can carefully aim at a specific point. She was moving. He fired at her upper torso, an area highly likely to cause a fatal wound. So no ... He did not apparently try not to kill her.

So the bar you've set is that the police may kill a rioter, and if that causes the others to back off, the killing of an unarmed woman is justified because "it did the job" on the rest of the crowd.

You're comfortable with that?

Would you be OK with deliberately shooting an unarmed woman "to send a message"? If you had to live with that decision, would you be fine with it?

I am a career law enforcement officer. This is not political to me. It shouldn't be for you either.

I was extremely disappointed with Trump on January 6th. I hold him morally responsible for what happened that day.

I did not approve of the storming of the Capitol in any way.

I also do not approve of police panicking under pressure and shooting and killing unarmed women.

And I believe the investigation is a whitewash, but completely unsurprising.

 

I'll file all of the above in the 'monday morning quarterbacking' file.

I don't know, given how Trump is trumping this up, there should be an investigation, to clear the air, but not a 'criminal' investigation.

Let the chips fall where they may. We weren't there, so you know we don't have all the facts. I won't make any assumptions, I wasn't in
that officer's shoes to know what happened, precisely.


It's easy to fall in the 'monday morning quarterbacking' trap.

I believe her relatives have filed a wrongful death suit, so that should bring out a lot of facts, discovery, and all that.

I do appreciate your holding Trump responsible for Jan 6. He is absolutely as responsible as those who actually did it.

 

Oh? Ok...

Counterpoint...

Babbitt NEVER should have been there (in the first place)...

If she had stayed home, she never would have found herself in the wrong place/wrong time...

Too bad that she got so mixed up (and mentally unstable):

her own social media postings and videos in which she rants about her conservative political views and support of Donald Trump.

 

I like this one:

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

― H.L. Mencken, On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe

 

Nevertheless, law enforcement officers should only use lethal force against a person when they can articulate that the person they shot was posing an immediate threat of death or serious physical injury to a person at the moment they were shot.

She shouldn't have been in the Capitol Building, yes, agreed. But that, in and of itself, does not justify gunning down an unarmed woman. Everyone who commits a crime is doing something they shouldn't be doing, but we don't just gun them down. Portland, OR, went through riots for about 120 days in 2020. Crimes by participants included murder, aggravated assault, arson to occupied buildings and residences, trespassing into public and private buildings, tens of millions of dollars worth of damage, and scores of police officers injured. Do you know how many rioters the Portland Police shot or killed? Zero.

My sense is that some of you are setting the bar for the use of lethal force by police very low because she was a Trump supporter.

You need to ask yourself if this same low bar can be transferred to other riots for other reasons at other places. I don't think it can. We cannot justify the use of lethal force against an unarmed woman by saying she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, or that we needed to send a message to a mob. Lethal force may be used to "send a message" in Bolivia. But the U.S. is not Bolivia, and the use of lethal force "to send a message" is not legal or morally acceptable.

 

Interesting take.

Welcome to Trump's America...

 

Then why didn't the Capital Police and SWAT who were on HER SIDE OF THE DOOR kill her. They were in the better position to judge the threat she posed. Who was she placing in imminent threat of death? The members of Congress had already been moved out. Who gave the order to use lethal force?

 

They moved to the side, were still there as they allowed her to try to go through the window and the SWAT team was there and not one of the them killed her. THEY were in the best position to judge any threat she posed. Show from the video where the Capital Police told her to halt or be shot. Who issued the shoot to kill order? And Trump had no control over those inside the Capital building and every thing you said about it is pure speculation.

 

He told them to go to the Capitol to influence Pence to return the certified elector ballots. The only way that could be done was by breaking into the Capitol, because the joint session had already begun.

 

This is one of the reasons why Pelosi created the commission, noting that republicans are opposed to it, to get to the bottom of all things Jan 6

We'll need to wait for their report. Who knows?

 

True...but my understanding is that they were being pushed against the door by the mob and got out of the way to allow more reinforcements coming from the outside. She hadn't gone through the window at that point. When the police on the outside of the door moved out of the way, the mob then surged forward, filling their space and breaking the windows.

 

She doesn't need a commission for that she could release all the videos and all the investigation interviews, why doesn't she. And interesting you claim to be able to read the mind of the shooter but not that of the officers who were in a better position to judge the threat. And they didn't need a SWAT team to stop the people at the door. Why didn't they TASER her? She never brandished a weapon why the lethal force?

 

He told them to go peaceful and protest at the Capital as protestors do on a regular basis. We have a right so such political protest. Some went too far, Trump had not control over them.

 

Hilarious.

 

Why, facts are just facts not particularly humours.

 

The facts will be decided by a jury at his trial.

 

I'm going to wait until the commission files their report. It's useless speculating.

 

Why do you think this commission is going to find something that the law enforcement investigations have not found. Why aren't you demanding THOSE reports be released.

In the meantime we can discuss what did occur and what we do know unless you are just going to wait then don't inject yourself into such discussions.

 

When is this trial scheduled exactly? When was he indicted and by whom? What facts are you claiming are missing? We have his entire speech that day and no where did he tell anyone to engage in any violence, quite the opposite.

 

Tump and company should not have been holding a rally on 1/6, it's only purpose was to disrupt a procedural count at the capitol and the use mob justice.