Kayleigh McEnany: No Tear Gas was used at Lafayette Square

Q    Kayleigh, you mentioned Dr. King.  He, likely, would not have approved of what took place Monday evening across from the White House, as you probably know.  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 could have a photo op?

MS. MCENANY:  So let me first address: No tear gas was used and no rubber bullets were used.

Q    Chemical agents were used.

MS. MCENANY:  So, again, no tear gas was used, no rubber bullets were used.

Q    Why are you making that distinction?

MS. MCENANY:  Let me —

Q    Chemical agents were used.

MS. MCENANY:  Let me — let me back up and —

Q    We talked to an Episcopal priest who said she was gassed.  Others say they were tear-gassed in that area.

MS. MCENANY:  Well, no one was tear-gassed.  Let me make that clear.  That’s been confirmed by DOD and by Park Services, as well.

Q    But chemical agents were used.

MS. MCENANY:  So let me go back and address what happened because there’s been a lot of misreporting.

 

.. Q    Kayleigh, why did the President feel it was important to go and walk over there, through the park, and to the church?

MS. MCENANY:  It was extremely important.  Look, the President wanted to send a very powerful message that we will not be overcome by looting, by rioting, by burning.  This is not what defines America.  And going and standing by St John’s Church was a very important moment.

And I would note that, through all of time, we’ve seen Presidents and leaders across the world who have had leadership moments and very powerful symbols that were important for our nation to see at any given time, to show a message of resilience and determination.  Like Churchill, we saw him inspecting the bombing damage; it sent a powerful message of leadership to the British people.  And George W. Bush throwing out the ceremonial first pitch after 9/11.  And Jimmy Carter, putting on a sweater to encourage energy savings.  And George H.W. Bush signing the Americans with Disabilities Act, flanked by two disabled Americans.

And for this President, it was powerful and important to send a message that the rioters, the looters, the anarchists, they will not prevail; that burning churches are not what America is about.  And that moment, holding the Bible up, is something that has been widely hailed by Franklin Graham and others.  And it was a very important symbol for the American people to see that we will get through this, through unity and through faith.

Why abortion — not sexual misconduct — is likely to decide the Alabama Senate race

Roy Moore is trying to save himself with a tried and true conservative move: resorting to the politics of abortion.

If Republican Roy Moore survives allegations of sexual misconduct (several involving minors) and beats Democrat Doug Jones in Alabama’s Senate election Dec. 12, evangelical single-issue abortion voters will likely deliver the victory.

.. Understanding the power of the abortion issue, Moore’s wife, Kayla, claimed at a rally that Jones is the real threat to children, because he supports “full-term abortion,” which she defined as “suck[ing] a child’s brains out at the moment before birth.” Such a procedure, however, simply does not exist, as states generally restrict abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy, except in cases of medical necessity.

.. they claim to want to protect children (which they deem unborn fetuses to be), but appear to actually care more about securing a vote for their legislative priorities

.. Before the 1960s, an American woman could obtain a legal abortion only by traveling abroad or having a local doctor persuade a (typically all-male) hospital committee that a pregnancy threatened her life. In practice, this allowed wealthier and better-connected women, who were the family and friends of doctors, to obtain legal, safe abortions under false pretenses — while everyone else was forced to seek illegal, often deadly, abortions.

Fed up with this situation, male reformers from medicine, law and some more progressive religious communities began trying to legalize abortion.

.. Although not all feminist groups supported legal abortion, most seized upon the issue because it fit their larger priorities quite nicely. They wanted to redefine womanhood outside the strict confines of motherhood and domesticity, and as part of this project, they strove to reform the law to offer new opportunities to women. Having the legal right to choose whether to become a mother thus became the ultimate expression of women’s rights.

.. Conservatives turned seemingly unrelated issues, such as lowering taxes, a longtime Republican priority, into a way to strike a blow against legal abortion (by eliminating Medicaid funding for the procedure).

.. Thus, opposing legal abortion, which reformers had positioned as the ultimate expression of women’s rights, became backing the traditional American family (a particularly powerful expression because the nuclear family arrangement had long been promoted as distinguishing America from its communist adversary, the USSR)

.. The economic recession in the 1970s, which left many male breadwinners struggling to keep their jobs, made it easier for conservative Republicans to portray the efforts of feminists and their Democratic allies as a systemic assault upon the family unit. They claimed that by pushing for more opportunities for women, feminists and Democrats were undermining male breadwinners and taking their jobs at a time when men needed them most.

.. When Moore and his supporters court single-issue abortion voters — notably, Alabama’s evangelical Republican base — they are saying: Doug Jones is for feminism, which means he backs women, like Moore’s accusers, who are trying to diminish male power and seize it for their own purposes. Mentioning Jones’s abortion stance also signals that he rejects the traditional nuclear family and women’s domestic and maternal responsibilities within it.

.. Moore, on the other hand, is presented as a conservative Republican who, whatever his personal failings, is fighting a spiritual battle for Christian values as well as the traditional nuclear family and its prescribed gender roles. This means that as a man, his expressions of sexuality need not be questioned, while a woman’s must be channeled into motherhood. In this sense, rallying to save unborn children is perfectly consistent with backing a candidate accused of assaulting minors.

Is the World of Journalism More Like Hollywood Than it Wants to Admit

It’s cynical but not so rare to assert that the highest tier of the realm of journalism is starting to resemble Hollywood. Halperin’s latest show, The Circus, ran on HBO, not a news network. Journalists play themselves in cameos in television shows and movies, and the White House Correspondent’s Dinner increasingly resembles Oscar Night for Washington. Some journalists have become full-scale “personality celebrities,” performing a drama of their own. The cover of Vanity Fair usually features a movie or music star; in January, Megyn Kelly stared out at viewers. Would anyone today launch a McLaughlin Group style-show of ruffled, not-quite-ready-for-prime-time middle-aged print reporters with more inside scoops than good looks?

How Roy Moore Met his Wife

.. Kyle Whitmire reads Moore’s autobiography, where he describes meeting his wife: “Many years before, I had attended a dance recital at Gadsden State Junior College,” Moore wrote. “I remembered one of the special dances performed by a young woman whose first and last names began with the letter ‘K.’ It was something I had never forgotten.

Could that young woman have been Kayla Kisor?” Moore later determined that it was. “Long afterward, I would learn that Kayla had, in fact, performed a special dance routine at Gadsden State years before,” he wrote.

. . . In an interview Moore gave earlier this year, he gave a similar account, but for one detail. “It was, oh gosh, eight years later, or something, I met her,” Moore said. “And when she told me her name, I remembered ‘K. K.,’ and I said, ‘Haven’t I met you before?’”

It’s a simple matter of subtraction. When Roy Moore first took notice of Kayla she would have been as young as 15. Or perhaps 16. Moore would have been roughly 30 at the time.