Per my comment on another thread, I think on any other news day this is a huge story (and still should be). But I guess it's just "Trumps buddy's buddies being Trumps buddy's buddies"* so no biggie.
*Apparently some Repubs are attempt to shrug off Trump's calling aside Comey to ask for the investigation to be stopped as just "Trump being Trump." Conveniently forgetting he admitted to firing Comey for that reason. Maybe just more Trump being Trump.
This is all fine. Middle Eastern trip is going to be tremendous.
When I saw this last night my brain momentarily had trouble convincing itself that this was in fact Sheridan Circle, not someplace in Ankara or something. Naive, sure, but jesus christ, since when do foreign security goons think they get to beat the shit out of people here? Oh, right.
At least the one cop got out his club.
Tillerson ignored questions from press about the incident.
Maybe if the Kurds pooled their money and bought a certain villa on a Caribbean island?
The cops didn't seem to be arresting the dudes in suits who were the apparent aggressors. I assume they are the security detail, so have some kind of immunity, but at least they should be arrested and processed through the system. At minimum they should be expelled from the country and barred from ever returning.
The cops are probably not used to clubbing white people in suits.
6: Or maybe denounced from the White House and State Dept. Haha, who am I kidding.
Per Andrea Mitchell: US officials confirm to NBC News men who beat protesters outside Turkish Embassy in DC are Pres. Erdogan's bodyguards.
Boy did the WaPo and NYT (WaPo in particular it being a "local" story) miss the story.
So, is the administration going to say anything about this? Good/bad/indifferent? Something?
Reddit is good for something after all.
Thanks. I never heard of that before. I particularly like the announcement.
9: Confirmed by Turkey as well, but it was the DC cops' fault for not beating the shit out of the protesters first:
On Wednesday, a Turkish state news agency acknowledged that guards for Erdogan, who had earlier met with President Trump at the White House, had intervened with the demonstrators at Sheridan Circle on Massachusetts Avenue. The Turkish news agency blamed the incident on an "inadequate" response by local police.
...
The news agency criticized U.S. police for failing to end the dissent; such protests arelargely put down in Turkey.
Just a note -- I remember when I was young in the 1970s, a Doonesbury cartoon about the Shah's secret police doing this to protesters in Iran. Someone leaped up at a dinner shouting "Down with the Shah! Down with the Sh . . .!" and then Roland Hedley announced "A protester has just been wrestled to the ground and had a napkin stuffed in his mouth, an unnecessary measure in the view of this reporter as a nasty rabbit punch has already taken his wind."
No point, except 'twas ever thus.
Hey, how did you do that? I have the worst luck finding old cartoon strips, is there some special trick to searching?
I used this navigator. It doesn't have full text search, but you can search by character and location and when I typed in "shah" for character it was able to connect that to the entry for "Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavī".
Well, at least there aren't any other scandals involving Turkey and the administration.
14. That week of Doonesbury is good. Whataboutism and other stuff.
18 - there's a "Preznit giv me turkee" joke in there somewhere.
20 Someone should redo that only signed by Flynn.
Apparently the State Department is actually starting to take this seriously. They are trying to ID the bodyguards responsible and they are taking a firm stance that the violence was unprovoked.
If the Sec'y of State were not a bushel of leaves there'd be some comment from the Administration. But I guess that would be at odds with his "I have to earn Trump's confidence every day" program.