The softest Nazis you ever did see
They're tough guys in the streets and delicate little babies in court.
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The Trump administration only wants the most formidable warriors, real stone-cold-killer types, to join his war on immigrants.
They should be white, of course, and ideally ‘roided up. These guys are the sort that can take a punch and not even blink, the hardest MFers you’re ever going to see. Just look at all the sizzle reels DHS is putting out, and you can feel the toughness through the screen, right? And you just know that if those dudes want to take you down, you’re going down.
Now, it’s not at all unusual for authoritarians to treat even the smallest pushback on law enforcement officers as an attack on their authority and an excuse to be rabidly violent. But that’s not quite what the administration is doing. In public, they want everyone to know that these thugs they’ve deployed to terrorize cities are battle-hardened and impervious to pain. But on the other hand, they are also such delicate flowers that if they are, say, lightly grazed by a sandwich, they are entitled to justice because of the horrific assault they have suffered.
Call it tough guy in the streets and widdle guy in the sheets (of paper for court filings).
The hero (sandwich) we need
Truly, nothing revealed this better than the Sandwich Guy, Sean Dunn, who a Washington DC jury found not guilty on Thursday.
Back in August, Dunn threw a subway sandwich at Gregory Lairmore, one of the many CBP agents the president sent to DC for what Trump claims is a crime crackdown, but is really more of an occupation.
Larimore was in a bulletproof vest, and the sub bounced off him harmlessly. Dunn then hoofed it out of there, giving us the spectacle of several other federal agents trying to catch him.
Dunn was arrested about a block away, but released relatively soon because come on, it’s a sandwich. He offered to turn himself in to federal authorities, but instead they did a dramatic nighttime raid at Dunn’s home, complete with armed agents in riot gear. It was filmed, of course, and the White House posted it on X with the caption: “Nighttime Routine: Operation Make DC Safe Again Edition.”
Safe from … sandwiches?
Larimore was apparently so harmed by the sandwich that US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro first tried to charge Dunn with a felony.
A felony. For … a sandwich?
The grand jury declined to indict Dunn for a felony because, again, it was a sandwich. So, Pirro’s office charged him with a misdemeanor, which doesn’t require a grand jury. And then we had the spectacle of a multi-day trial … over a sandwich.
Larimore took the stand to talk about his trauma, explaining that “the sandwich kind of exploded all over my uniform. It smelled of onions and mustard.” The horror!
Now, it’s comical that this big, brutal warrior would get on the stand to say that he literally felt assaulted by a sandwich exploding on his uniform. It’s more comical, though, that Dunn’s attorney then showed Larimore a photo of the sandwich on the ground. Wrapped. Not exploded.
Larimore tried to save the moment: “I had mustard and condiments on my uniform, and an onion hanging from my radio antenna that night.”
Part of what undercut Larimore’s assertion that the mustard and onions put him in real fear, made him feel violently attacked, was that he got gag gifts from his fellow tough guy federal agents, like a plush sandwich and a patch reading “Felony Footlong,” and was just fine with it.
“Boo-boos”
Dunn is not the only one to walk free from a ridiculous trial.
Back in July, Sidney Reid was filming ICE agents outside a DC jail, which made those agents mad, so one grabbed her and shoved her against a wall, while an FBI agent, Eugenia Bates, decided to join in. While these folks were violently arresting Reid for the not-at-all-a-crime of filming them, Reid’s knee allegedly jerked and made contact with Bates’s groin.
You can see Bates’s horrifying injury here. Yes, that is basically a tiny scrape on her hand, presumably obtained when she was assisting in wrongfully arresting Reid. If you got that injury, you’d go home and put some Bactine on it and maybe a bandage. Maybe. But you are not a federal agent, as they are apparently made of glass.
You know what comes next, right? Pirro’s office tried three times to get a grand jury to agree this was a felony, and when that didn’t work, charged Reid with a misdemeanor and had a nonsense trial. Bates took the stand, and, as with Larimore, it wasn’t just that Bates had no real injuries. She was also so unbothered by it that it was literally a joke. The judge allowed jurors to see text messages Bates had sent where she called her injuries “boo-boos” and called Reid a “libtard.” Last month, a DC jury declined to convict, taking about two hours to deal with this absolute slop.
Let’s leave DC and head to Chicago, where Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino is the toughest thing going. He cosplays as a Nazi. Well, scratch that. He is pretty much a Nazi, and he loves to dress the part.
Bovino is overseeing the brutal occupation of a city and has some very peculiar notions of what is legal. He’s told his officers that they can “go hard” against people and arrest them for making verbal threats to officers. He’s cool with firing pepper balls at protesters because “If someone strays into a pepper ball, then that’s on them. Don’t protest and don’t trespass.” Not really a fan of the First Amendment, is he?
Bovino’s problem is that no one has actually done anything to him. There’s a quick solution for that: just lie about it. So, when Bovino wanted to tear-gas the Little Village neighborhood last month, he lied and said he was hit by a rock. Unfortunately for Bovino, there was video showing otherwise, so he had to admit that there was no rock, no harm.
Judge Sara Ellis entered a temporary restraining order barring Bovino and his merry band of fascists from using tear gas without warnings and riot control weapons unless it’s necessary to protect the life of someone or prevent a catastrophic outcome, and required they wear body cameras. But Bovino just ignored her and kept letting his officers use tear gas, flash-bangs, and pepper balls with no warning.
On Thursday, Ellis entered a preliminary injunction, saying that Bovino had lied about his actions and those of the protesters. Her injunction extends the restrictions from the earlier temporary restraining order and also bars Bovino’s brownshirts from using tear gas or pepper spray on anyone who does not pose a threat.
But that’s the problem here. The administration is insistent that its agents are under attack 24/7. Kristi Noem’s hyperbolic insistence that violence against ICE officers is up has led to some truly unique math.
Last week, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told the extremely gullible and Trump-friendly New York Post that death threats against ICE officers are up 8,000 percent. She says threats are up 1,000 percent, but no, you can’t see the actual numbers. That’s supposedly up from 300 percent in April and 413 percent in June. Philip Bump tried to verify that 413 percent claim, but since DHS won’t provide any actual underlying numbers, we’ll all just have to take it on faith that ICE agents are under siege.
Except we know they are not. Every day brings new videos of federal agents doing things like dragging a teacher out of the daycare where she worked, while children looked on.
Would you like to know how DHS “set the record straight” on this? By saying that, in going into the building — the one she works in — the teacher was “recklessly endangering the children inside.” Dunno. It seems more reckless to have armed thugs pull her out of the daycare.
In September, a federal agent killed a man after pulling him over shortly after he dropped off his kids at school. DHS said Silverio Villegas Gonzalez was driving toward the agent, so he had to respond with lethal force because he was “fearing for his own life.”
Yeah, about that. The body cam footage showed the ICE agent saying, “I got a cut,” showing his bloody knee, and saying he had some cuts on his hand and elbow. “Nothing major.” That sure doesn’t sound like someone fearing for their life. It does, however, sound like the actions of someone who is a little tiny baby, so scared of who knows what that he had to kill a man.
Fake tough guys
DHS has created a contradictory world, one that can’t hold together. Are the ICE agents the most impervious stormtrooper supermen around, here to save us all? Or are they so vulnerable that they crumple if they receive the slightest scratch? It can’t be both.
The federal government keeps painting a front-facing, meme-driven picture of ICE, one where they are impossibly tough and skilled, and they get to crack heads because it is so violent out there. But when they are forced to tell the truth in court, their injuries are comically minor, the kind of thing you wouldn’t even go home from work for.
So, which is it? Well, it really is both.
When DHS’s goons are a roving band of masked armed men, they’re tough as hell. And why not? They spend their days arresting schoolteachers and tear-gassing kids from a safe distance away. They’re pretty impervious to harm. That said, they also are little babies, because they don’t believe there should be any consequences for their actions, and even the smallest harm they suffer is an outrage, something they simply can’t comprehend.
So, they can posture all they want, but we know what’s underneath all that tactical gear and rage: nothing but the softest little underbelly.
That’s it for today
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Is perjury not a thing anymore, or is that just for everyone else?
ICE are not trained law enforcement… no self respecting law enforcement officer would behave this way. Yes there are bad apples, but an entire agency? Are we sure Jeannine Pirro isn’t in charge of it? Do they collect court fees on these cases?🤬 Great report, Lisa. The rotten fish stinks to high heaven!