Maybe he’s a provocateur from Mars?
Chris Cillizza at CNN comments:
In a country on high alert for incidents of unnecessary use of force by police against those protesting in the wake of the death of George Floyd, the video sparked outrage. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called the episode “wholly unjustified and utterly disgraceful.” The two officers involved in the incident were suspended.
But on Tuesday morning, the President of the United States suggested — without offering a shred of evidence — that the entire episode was the result of a broad scam involving Antifa, a protest organization “whose political beliefs lean toward the left — often the far left — but do not conform with the Democratic Party platform.”
Trump appears to have developed this, uh, theory from watching a clip on the One America News Network, the Fox News of Fox News.
They came up with that “Oooh he was scanning the police” nonsense, for which there is no evidence of any kind.
What we also know is that Gugino is a longtime activist and peaceful protester. There is no evidence that he is part of Antifa.
Given all of these facts, the level of irresponsibility here on display by Trump is off the charts — even for him. While Gugino remains hospitalized, Trump is suggesting that this is all some sort of orchestrated fake. That the man “fell harder than was pushed.” That he was “aiming a scanner.” That it “could be a setup.”
We have always been at war with reality.
Gugino certainly fell harder than intended by the officer, who pretty clearly only meant to shove the old man away. (You can even see the “oh shit” body language in the video.) However, being 75 years old and tall means that what would be a simple push to a younger man instead causes a total loss of footing. Shoving old people is a Bad Idea. Most people know better.
And a police officer should have to know better. Hell, maybe having to deal with a real protest situation overwhelmed his common sense. That is what training is supposed to be for. Police training, whether for riot duty or traffic patrol, should include preparing police for the mental demands of the real thing.
I mean, shit, man. I can’t help but see my father being shoved and falling because peripheral neuropathy has rendered his feet largely numb.
What does that even mean: “scanning the police”??
God knows. There’s no doubt something about it in that OANN thing Trump watched and swallowed whole, but it’s probably bullshit anyway. Scan scan scan hmm hmm miracle scan scan. Something like that.
Maybe he has one of those “scanning for lifeforms” things Spock always carried on Star Trek? I’m sure Elon Musk must have invented one by now, right?
I wish we had tricorders. That’d be awesome.
I don’t know either. It’s not uncommon for certain police bands to be unencrypted and it’s possible that he was listening in to those channels. It’s much more likely, however, that he was using his phone for one of the thousands of things it can do that are not scanning police radio.
The idea that he was trying to “block” police radio channels is even more dubious. Police radios tend to have defences against jamming, the jamming would be very local anyway and I don’t see how it could be done with the equipment the man was holding, which appeared to be a phone. And the police would have needed equipment to figure out that he had a jam-capable device on him, which they don’t seem to have.
It’s also far from clear how pushing the man over would have ended or prevented the blocking.
Or to put it another way the whole accusation is bullshit. But we knew that anyway.
latsot, there you go again, trying to use logic, reason, and facts. Don’t you know we live in a post-reality world?