MADISON — Gov. Tony Evers likes to talk tough — as tough as a wan, monotoned, natural-born bureaucrat can sound — when he’s scolding President Donald Trump.
Evers sent Trump a tersely-worded letter last week telling the president that federal agents were not welcome in Wisconsin.
The liberal governor was “disappointed” and “deeply disturbed” to learn, in a TV interview of all places, that the Trump administration was considering sending federal agents to Milwaukee. (It is interesting that the governor who has issued economy-killing health orders without notifying businesses, local governments and other stakeholders of his plans now has his nose out of joint because the feds didn’t dial him up.)
“I am writing to convey my strong opposition to any such intervention,” Evers wrote in his stinging rebuke.
In short, we don’t need no stinking Federales here, tough-talking Tony insists.
He doesn’t want Milwaukee to turn into Portland. Evers and his leftist friends, including Portland’s incredibly obtuse woke mayor, believe the federal agents sent to Portland to stop Antifa and its mob of radicals from burning taxpayer-funded property to the ground are the problem.
“As we have seen in Portland, this excessive and unwelcome federal law enforcement presence only makes these situations more volatile and dangerous,” Evers lectured Trump.
The left’s narrative, perpetuated by the mainstream media, is that the protests in Portland are just peaceful demonstrations against police violence and racism. They’re not. Night after night since May, the “peaceful” protests have been marked by vandalism, riots, looting and arson.
“They cycle through a number of chants like ‘All cops are bastards’ and “F-?-k the police.’ A large number of them participate in violent criminal acts such as arson and assault. They’ve made it a game to lure law-enforcement officers out of buildings so they can assault them with blinding lasers, paint, rocks and other weapons,” journalist Andy Ngo recently wrote in the New York Post.
In other words, these are not victims of police brutality or “the system.”
Matthew D. Krueger, U.S. attorney for Wisconsin’s Eastern District, told the Green Bay Press Gazette that federal agents coming to Milwaukee in several weeks will focus on violent crime, illegal gun cases and slowing the city’s soaring homicide rate.
As of Friday, the city had reported 97 homicides, up 86 percent from the 52 at the same time last year.
“There are sons and daughters and mothers and fathers who are being killed in Milwaukee at unbelievable rates,” Krueger said. “This is a partnership to help solve those crimes and to focus on the guns that are illegally trafficked and causing some of these shootings.”
Evers’ point, however, that this type of “unilateral intervention” has not been requested by the city of Milwaukee or the state, has garnered some sympathy in conservative circles.
“As idiotic as it is for the Gov to turn down fed help as murders in (Milwaukee) are skyrocketing, it’s an overreach of fed power to send fed agents in w/o a specific request from the state. The incompetence of (Milwaukee) Mayor & Gov to deal w/this doesn’t excuse the overreach. #federalism,” Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke (R-Kaukauna) wrote on his personal Twitter account on Friday.
But the governor’s insistence that his administration and Wisconsin’s liberal-led cities have got the whole violence and rioting thing covered is beyond absurd.
Ask the State Street businesses crushed by looters in the first round of “peaceful protests” in early June how safe they feel. Or the business owners and the government officials around Capitol Square in late June when a mob of Black Lives Matter protesters smashed windows, tore down statues, firebombed public buildings, and threatened and assaulted their way through a night of disorder and violence.
As Empower Wisconsin first reported, Evers and Madison’s socialist mayor were so worried about what the rioters might think of them that they ordered city and Capitol Police to stand down. Evers failed to call in the State Patrol to assist overstressed law enforcement officials in regaining order.
Tough-talking Tony and his fellow lefties don’t want help from Trump because the president, not the criminals ripping up and burning down American cities, is their Public Enemy No. 1.