From the June 1, 2021, New Day show on CNN
BRIANNA KEILAR: Today marks one year since Donald Trump's infamous photo op at St. John's church at the height of the nationwide George Floyd protests. Further proof that one of his biggest lies about that day does not pass the smell test, the D.C. Police, through an attorney, finally admitting that law enforcement used teargas that day against peaceful protesters. You'll recall that June day last year police cleared demonstrators from Lafayette Square so that Trump could walk over, hold up a Bible in front of the church that had been damaged the night before and say cheese.
(BISHOP MARIANN BUDDE, EPISCOPAL DIOCESE OF WASHINGTON)
Now, after the photo op, Trump and his allies insisted that no one was teargassed.
JIM ACOSTA (in White House briefing room): If the White House, the President and his team had to do it all over again, would you have gassed and pummeled protesters to clear the park so the President would have a photo op?
KAYLEIGH MCENANY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: So let me first address, no teargas was used and no rubber bullets were used.
ACOSTA: (inaudible) ... were used.
MCENANY: So, again, no teargas was used -- no rubber bullets were used.
KEILAR: The President himself pushed the lie.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP (audio on Fox News Radio): They didn't use teargas. There's so much fake news. Most news is fake. They're corrupt and they're fake.
KEILAR: Those comments on Fox, where he had backup.
LOU DOBBS, FOX BUSINESS NETWORK: There was never any teargas.
JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: So they threw some smoke bombs out and pushed them back. Wow, Armageddon. Really?
KEILAR: Now, Trump's campaign doubled down. They said, quote, "It is said that a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its pants on. This teargas lie is proof of that." Tim Murtaugh, the spokesman, would go on saying, quote, "For nearly an entire day, the whole of the press corps frantically reported the news of a teargas attack on peaceful protesters with no evidence to support such claims."
Except there was evidence. There was lots of it. Teargas is pretty unmistakable. It hurts. It burns. Your eyes and your nose and your lungs won't deceive you on this one, and my colleague who was there in the crowd at the time, CNN correspondent Alex Marquardt said this. quote. "This no-teargas angle is ridiculous. I was in the middle of the crowd coughing up a lung. All sorts of projectiles were being fired at a peaceful crowd." And Alex went on, quote, "This was 25 minutes before the curfew. There was no obvious warning to protesters to leave."
And then there were the pictures where you can see the aftermath of a teargas attack, and there were witnesses under oath like a major in the D.C. National Guard who was there who said this before Congress.
MAJOR ADAM DEMARCO, D.C. NATIONAL GUARD: I could feel irritation in my eyes and nose. Based off my previous exposure to teargas in training, I recognized that irritation as effects consistent with CS or teargas. And later that evening, I found spent teargas canisters on the street nearby.
KEILAR: Major Adam DeMarco served as the liaison between the National Guard and Park Police. He called the use of force there "deeply disturbing." But Trump's campaign tried to stretch the definition of teargas and downplayed the measures that were used, again, against peaceful protesters. Quote, "What the campaign said is completely consistent with what the Park Police is saying. There was no teargas used. The media is trying to widen the definition of teargas to make their own original reporting seem accurate." Except it was teargas by the federal government's own definition of teargas. The CDC defines teargas as "riot control agents and chemical compounds that temporarily make people unable to function by causing irritation to the eyes, mouth, throat, lungs and skin."
So fast forward to now -- a year after Trump stood in front of St. John's church, and the attorney for the D.C. Police is finally admitting the obvious for the first time -- that officers did use teargas on protesters while defending their actions -- that's how this came out -- against lawsuits by protesters and the ACLU.
This is what the attorneys said. Quote, "The curfew violence of past nights, chaos created by federal defendants, discharge of teargas in that direction was not unreasonable." And the attorney claimed that officers did not target specific protesters. Apparently teargassing a peaceful crowd indiscriminately is actually a defense, though, at the time, even the Trump campaign knew that it wasn't as a spokesman demanded, quote, "Every news organization which reported the teargas lie should immediately correct or retract its erroneous reporting."
It has been a year, and finally, an answer that you can't just dismiss. To quote former Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh -- who was actually quoting a made-up quote when he said it -- according to the New York Times -- it said a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its pants on. President Trump and his allies were certainly banking on that. They were dressed and out the door with their lie. Teargas-lighting at its worst.
JOHN BERMAN: Yeah, the only pants here are on fire I think.
KEILAR: Exactly.
. Craig Millward
