Republican Senator Sasse Condemns Trump Stunt Treating ‘The Word of God as a Political Prop’

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Republican Senator Ben Sasse (NE) slammed President Donald Trump having police forcibly clear protestors outside the White House so that he could stage a photo op in front of a church in Washington D.C. Tuesday night.

Sasse issued a statement Tuesday, obtained by the National Review, that expressed opposition to “clearing out a peaceful protest for a photo op that treats the Word of God as a political prop.” Read the full statement here:

There is no right to riot, no right to destroy others’ property, and no right to throw rocks at police. But there is a fundamental — a Constitutional — right to protest, and I’m against clearing out a peaceful protest for a photo op that treats the Word of God as a political prop. Every public servant in America should be lowering the temperature and that means saying two basic truths over and over: (1) police injustice — like the evil murder of George Floyd — is repugnant and merits peaceful protest aimed at change; (2) riots are abhorrent acts of violence that hurt the innocent. Say both things loudly and repeatedly, as Americans work to end the violence and injustice.

Heavily armed police forcefully cleared protestors outside the White House shortly before President Donald Trump’s Rose Garden speech on Tuesday night. Roughly thirty minutes before the 7 p.m. curfew, police used tear gas and flash grenades to clear the crowd of peaceful protestors. One journalist was brutally beaten. The crackdown was carried out to that Trump could walk through Lafayette Square, from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church, where he posed with a Bible for cameras.

Sasse is the rare Republican in office to criticize Trump for the stunt. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called the move an “abuse of power,” while Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) deemed it “repulsive and frightening.”

“The president’s abhorrent abuse of military is what you’d expect from a two bit dictator,” he said, announcing a Judiciary Committee hearing “to stop the militarization of our nation.”