As of Monday, about 6,000 troops remain in Washington D.C. occupying the nation’s capital. According to Fox News, internal government communications show the occupation may last through the fall, as opposed to the currently public March end date.
According to one internal email shared with Fox News, the Pentagon’s assistant secretary of defense, Robert Salesses, wrote:
If it’s not possible to sustain at the current level the [National Guard] personnel, we need to establish the number of [National Guard] personnel ([D.C. National Guard] and out-of-state] we can sustain for an extended period – at least through Fall 2021 – and understand additional options for providing DoD support, to include use of reserve personnel, as well as active component.
The military occupation took its grip on Washington in response to the January riot when a horde of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building. No such show of military force was deployed in the aftermath of the militant Black Lives Matter riots that shook the city for days.
Reminder that our nation's capital looked like this at the beginning of the summer and most Democrats/media shrugged it off as mostly peaceful https://t.co/1zvsLVRuQc
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) January 6, 2021
Fencing erected around the Capitol building for President Joe Biden’s inauguration may now become permanent.
“In light of recent events, I can unequivocally say that vast improvements to the physical security infrastructure must be made to include permanent fencing, and the availability of ready, back-up forces in close proximity to the Capitol,” Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman said in a January statement more than a week after Biden’s swearing in.
No such extended protection was afforded to the business owners whose lives’ work was destroyed by militant anarchists, or the memorials to real social justice warriors defaced by self-proclaimed social justice warriors. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had previously criticized the police presence protecting the Lincoln Memorial, who stayed at the monument for less than a week as opposed to several months.
Nancy Pelosi criticized the use of the military to guard the Lincoln Memorial after DC experienced multiple riots last year. pic.twitter.com/hY5UPNVacE
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) January 13, 2021
Fox News reports government officials estimate the total cost of the National Guard’s enhanced security in D.C. to this point nears $450 million.
“If this seems theatrical and excessive, it’s because it is,” Federalist Senior Editor Chris Bedford wrote of the intense police presence. “Worse yet, it’s about politics, not security, with the same politicians who claimed Antifa violence against their voters was a ‘myth’ now insisting they need a full division of troops to defend them from a rebel army that doesn’t exist.”
Congressional Republicans are growing increasingly agitated by the high troop levels on the nation’s footsteps with little to no details of any actual threats that warrant their stay.
“Myself and several of my colleagues have asked Nancy Pelosi for a briefing as to why do we need these troops here, and we have received zero information,” Michigan GOP Rep. Lisa McClain complained on Fox News Monday.
