GOP senators dodge on treatment of White House protesters

Several Republican senators sidestepped weighing in on the removal of largely peaceful protesters from near the White House on Monday night.

Protesters were removed from Lafayette Square shortly before President Trump walked across the street to St. John’s Episcopal Church, part of which had been set on fire the night before. 

The tactics have sparked fierce backlash from Democrats, who have questioned if the move was illegal, but several GOP senators, asked about it on Tuesday, said they had not seen or hadn’t been following the footage, which was played on TV and circulated widely on social media. 

“I didn’t watch it closely enough to know,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) told reporters. 

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said as he entered a closed-door caucus lunch that he “didn’t really see it.”

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), asked about it as he left the lunch, told reporters that he had been “reading.”

And Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) added as he left that he didn’t “follow” Monday night’s protest in front of the White House.

Others, including Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), said they were running late for a weekly Senate Republican lunch, while some didn’t respond to questions at all as they entered the caucus meeting.

The treatment of protesters near the White House did not come up during the party’s closed-door lunch, according Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Mike Braun (R-Ind.). 

And asked if he was “comfortable” with the “scene” near the White House, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) didn’t directly address if he supported the decision to remove protesters. 

“I’ve already told you what I think about last night. I’m relieved that apparently there were few to no injuries last night, apparently little or no looting,” McConnell said. 

McConnell also sidestepped a question on if he thought Trump was providing the right kind of leadership in response to the protests, telling reporters: “I’m not going to critique other people’s performances. I can speak for myself, and I just have.” 

Law enforcement removed demonstrators from Lafayette Square shortly before Trump left the White House and crossed the street with other administration officials to St. John’s Episcopal Church, where he briefly stood outside while giving remarks and holding a Bible.

Multiple media outlets at the protest reported that law enforcement officials used tear gas and rubber bullets to remove protesters. The head of the U.S. Park Police insisted on Tuesday that it used pepper balls and smoke canisters, but not tear gas.

Law enforcement officials separately told The Washington Post that Attorney General William Barr personally ordered for the perimeter near the White House to be extended, pushing protesters away from Lafayette Square.

Some GOP senators broke with the White House on Tuesday for removing the protesters, marking a rare area of criticism of Trump. 

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is up for reelection in November, said that it was “painful to watch.” And Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) — who like Collins is a moderate GOP senator— told reporters it was “not the America I know.” 

“If your question is, should you use tear gas to clear a path so the president can go have a photo op, the answer is no,” Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), the only black Republican senator, told Politico. 

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) also indicated in a statement that he thought Trump used the Bible “as a political prop,” while also saying there is “no right to riot, no right to destroy others’ property, and no right to throw rocks at police.”

“There is a fundamental—a Constitutional—right to protest, and I’m against clearing out a peaceful protest for a photo op that treats the Word of God as a political prop,” Sasse, who won his Senate primary last month, said in a statement. 

But those remarks were a minority compared to many of their Republican colleagues, who either didn’t directly address the treatment of protesters outside the White House or, in some cases, defended it.

Asked if what he saw at the White House was an abuse of power, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told reporters “by the protesters, yes.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) contested that the crowd was cleared so that Trump could cross the street, telling reporters “that’s not accurate.” He also suggested that protesters remained near the White House to try to provoke a response from the police. 

“The bottom line is that there was a curfew at 7 p.m. … It was 6:45. … You disobey police orders that you have an unlawful congregation of people. They know the police have to move forward on them, that will trigger the use of tear gas, and it plays right into the imagery that they want,” Rubio added.

Asked if it was an abuse of power, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) replied: “Are you kidding me? No.”

“Security of the president, it’s a national imperative. If the president’s going to be someplace and there’s a curfew coming up, then the Secret Service has every authority to clear the place out when people are asked to leave and they refuse to leave,” he said. “So you guys are peddling a false narrative.”