"Park Police sources told WTOP that this was not the case, arguing that the protesters were not all peaceful, that tear gas was not used [they said they used smoke and pepper balls], and that officers did not know of Trump’s visit to the house of worship.
The outlet went on to report that the crowd was pushed back when officers were being hit with water bottles and that protesters had climbed onto the top of a structure at the north end of Lafayette Square that had been attacked and burned a day earlier.”
But I'm sure Vox, motherjones, and NYT's best journalists were on the scene to set the record straight.
"St. John’s Episcopal Church, just north of the White House off of Lafayette Square, has been visited by every president since James Madison. Some of them have worshipped there. It’s a part of our nation’s fabric — culturally, religiously and historically.
Maybe that’s what the catch was: the old, ossified, white supremacist America being torched as a symbolic gesture. Maybe that’s why rioters lit the basement aflame and defaced the exterior of the church on Sunday. That’ll pave the way for … something.
But therein lay the problem: By doing that, they were also attacking a civil rights landmark."
