Though there's certainly been no shortage of dumb-as-shit photo ops in the Trump era, the one that saw the purported POTUS and other administration officials waltzing over to St. John's Episcopal Church for some bible fuckery is certainly among the dumbest-as-shittiest.
And while Donald "It's a Bible" Trump has defended the resulting imagery following criticism from any rational person regarding the violence he waged against protesters in order to procure said imagery, his own Defense Secretary isn't even backing up his behavior.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper, per NBC News, explained that the photo op was actually a surprise to him.
"I thought I was going to do two things: to see some damage and to talk to the troops," he said, adding that he thought everyone was walking over to see "the vandalized bathroom in Lafayette Square" near the church.
"I didn't know where I was going," he said. "I wanted to see how much damage actually happened." Esper and Army General Mark Milley are also said to have been unaware that cops were deploying tear gas and extreme force on protesters to make the photo op possible.
Esper has also expressed disapproval of Trump's threat of rolling out the military against protesters nationwide.
"We are not in one of those situations now," he said during a Pentagon briefing. "I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act."
On Wednesday, word broke that Derek Chauvin's third-degree murder charge in the George Floyd murder case was being upgraded to second-degree. Additionally, it was revealed that Minnesota AG Keith Ellison had decided the remaining three officers would be charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder.
