President Donald Trump promises to “put down” Democrats who choose to exercise their First Amendment rights to protest in the streets if he wins re-election.
“We’ll put them down very quickly if they do that. We have the right to do that. We have the power to do that, if we want,” Trump told Fox News host Jeanine Pirro in a taped interview that will air Saturday, as Politico reports.
“Look, it’s called insurrection,” the president added. “We just send in, and we do it very easy. I mean, it’s very easy. I’d rather not do that because there’s no reason for it, but if we had to, we’d do that and put it down within minutes.”
For months Trump has been deploying into American cities paramilitary SWAT teams of federal secret police with no insignias or name badges, armed with assault weapons, who have been tear gassing U.S. citizens protesting police killings of unarmed Black people.
Included among these highly-armed elite tactical agents are members of the U.S. Border Patrol’s BORTAC unit who receive “enhanced Special Forces-type training, including sniper certification,” The New York Times has reported. These “officers typically conduct high-risk operations targeting individuals who are known to be violent, many of them with extensive criminal records.”
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