The Morning Dispatch: Mattis Breaks His Silence

Happy Thursday. Right at the top, we want to note a quick correction: Yesterday’s Morning Dispatch misidentified a military vehicle seen on the streets of D.C. as a tank; it was actually a truck used for refueling. Thanks to those of you who caught the error; we’ll spend the weekend drilling our military vehicles flash cards in penance.

And a reminder to our members: There is a Dispatch Live event tonight. Sarah, Jonah, David, and Steve will take your questions and discuss the latest news at 8 p.m. ET/ 5 p.m. PT. To join your fellow Dispatch-ers for an hour of lively discussion, register here.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• As of Wednesday night, 1,851,520 cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the United States (an increase of 19,699 from yesterday) and 107,175 deaths have been attributed to the virus (an increase of 995 from yesterday), according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Dashboard, leading to a mortality rate among confirmed cases of 5.8 percent (the true mortality rate is likely much lower, between 0.4 percent and 1.4 percent, but it’s impossible to determine precisely due to incomplete testing regimens). Of 18,214,950 coronavirus tests conducted in the United States (457,112 conducted since yesterday), 10.2 percent have come back positive.

• George Floyd had tested positive for coronavirus in the weeks before he died.

• Defense Secretary Mark Esper said that he was opposed to Trump’s potential invocation of the Insurrection Act, a move that the president has publicly mused about taking in the past days. Reports indicate that Esper’s comments were not well-received at the White House and, when asked about it, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said: “As of now, Secretary Esper is still Secretary Esper.” 

• Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has upgraded the charges against Derek Chauvin, the officer charged with killing George Floyd, to second-degree murder. In addition, the three other officers at the scene of Floyd’s death are charged with aiding and abetting murder.

• Former President Barack Obama discussed the protests and called on Americans to “take that moment that’s been created as a society, as a country, and say let’s use this to finally have an impact” in a virtual town hall on Wednesday.

• Months after diverging from much of the rest of the world and instituting relatively loose COVID-19 lockdown measures, Sweden’s per capita coronavirus death rate is now the highest in the world, and is a full five to 10 times higher than its Scandinavian neighbors Norway, Denmark, and Finland. In an interview with Swedish radio, Anders Tegnell, the epidemiologist behind Sweden’s controversial approach, said he would take a different approach if he had to do it again.

• The White House’s official Twitter account posted a video with a caption accusing “Antifa and professional anarchists” of staging bricks in different locations to help organize their continued campaign of property damage and violence, but one of the clips included in the video was of a synagogue’s rock security barrier—not an Antifa brick-staging site. The White House has since deleted the tweet, without explanation.

General Mattis Breaks His Silence

At 6 p.m. Wednesday, The Atlantic published a statement from Gen. James Mattis, who served as Donald Trump’s secretary of defense from January 2017 through the end of December 2018. It was, in publishing jargon, a great get. Any reporter with national security sources has long been aware that Mattis has had many more serious reservations about the president than he’s expressed publicly. He has avoided the spotlight since resigning and in the interviews he’s given, he’s been diplomatic, even evasive. 

No more.

Mattis unloads in the statement, condemning Trump’s use of the military as a prop and a police force and denouncing the president’s eagerness to divide the country on purpose. 

When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside. We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors.

Mattis was just getting started. 

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.

We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. At the same time, we must remember Lincoln’s “better angels,” and listen to them, as we work to unite. Only by adopting a new path—which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.

The Mattis statement matters in a way that many critiques of Trump do not. Mattis worked for Trump for two years. He was in regular meetings with the president, discussing the most sensitive and important matters of national security with the commander-in-chief. He’s not speculating about Trump from afar or offering suppositions as analysis. In addition to the authority he’s earned over a long and distinguished career, he speaks as one of a handful of high-ranking officials who have been firsthand witnesses to the way Donald Trump has operated as president. 

But the Mattis statement matters for another reason: He is saying in public what many Republican elected officials say in private. He tries to divide us … We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. 

While some GOP elected officials are unwavering, enthusiastic Trump fans, there are many others who detest the president, disapprove of his conduct, and worry about the consequences of his presidency. But most Republican voters back Trump and the activist base loves him. So, these elected Republicans are torn between their voters and their conscience. The statement from Mattis frames the significance of their choice and weighs in heavily on the side of their conscience. We owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.

The Mattis statement matters for another reason, too. It comes as part of a growing chorus of statements by senior military officials, both recently retired and currently serving. Writing in The Atlantic, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen blasts the Trump administration’s handling of the current unrest, arguing that “we are at an inflection point, and the events of the past few weeks have made it impossible to remain silent. More striking was a memo released publicly by Gen. Mark Milley, current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Milley, who has come under great scrutiny for his participation in Trump’s bizarre photo-op on Monday evening, wrote to the joint force, reminding them of their fidelity to the Constitution and the ideals it represents. He asked the service chiefs to remind their forces that “we will uphold the values of our nation, and operate consistent with national laws and our own high standards of conduct at all times.” In a handwritten addendum, Milley wrote: “We all committed our lives to the idea that is America—we will stay true to that oath and to the American people.” If the language in the memo wasn’t surprising in the context of the current unrest, the mere fact of its existence is significant. Other military leaders put out similar statements, including Gen. Joseph Lengyel, leader of the National Guard. 

Earlier in the day, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper walked back his support for the use of the Insurrection Act of 1807, saying at a press conference that such extreme measures should be reserved for “the most urgent and dire situations.”

The Case Against Derek Chauvin

Nearly two weeks in, there’s little sign that protests over George Floyd’s death are slowing. In major cities like New York and Washington, D.C., police have spent this week dramatically scaling up their response to the ongoing crisis, with mixed results.

On the one hand, after widespread organized looting earlier in the week, New York managed a far calmer night Wednesday. On the other, they managed that feat through much stricter curfew enforcement—which meant moving aggressively to disperse many protesters whose only crime was being out later than the mayor had authorized.

“When we have these big crowds, especially in this area, especially where we’ve had the looting, no more tolerance,” NYPD chief Terence Monahan told reporters. “They have to be off the street. An 8 o’clock curfew—we gave them to 9 o’clock.”

More aggressive dispersion means more possibility for violent confrontations. And with pretty much every protestor wielding a smartphone video camera, that means another day of the hairiest of those encounters exploding across social media, which can potentially serve as a catalyst for more and angrier protesters turning out over the nights to come. 

If the protests over Floyd’s death have been tumultuous, so too have the legal proceedings against the police officers who seemingly brought his death about. Yesterday, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced his office would upgrade the charges against Derek Chauvin, the officer who pinned Floyd to the ground, knee on neck, adding a second-degree murder charge to the existing third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter charges.

Ellison also finally charged the three other officers involved in Floyd’s fatal arrest of aiding and abetting murder—a charge that carries the same maximum penalties as the murder charge itself.

“Police are trained that this type of restraint with a subject in a prone position is inherently dangerous,” an amended criminal complaint filed today states. “Officer Chauvin’s restraint of Mr. Floyd in this manner for a prolonged period was a substantial factor in Mr. Floyd losing consciousness, constituting substantial bodily harm, and Mr. Floyd’s death as well.”

Generally speaking, second degree murder is charged in cases where a person deliberately takes the life of another (without premeditation, which would bump it up to a first degree charge). But Minnesota law also permits a second-degree charge in cases where the killing was not intentional, but took place while the perpetrator was already committing another violent felony—in this case, felony assault. Minnesota’s third-degree murder statute, by contrast, applies in cases where a person kills another “by perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard to human life.”

It’s worth noting as well that while this sort of “felony murder” is considered a more serious crime than “depraved heart murder,” the two charges carry an identical presumptive sentence of 150 months. (If you’re interested in the legal niceties involved here, Minnesota law professor Ted Sampsell-Jones has a good breakdown of it all up at the site today.)

The new charges were the latest striking development in two weeks that have been full of them. After Floyd’s death, it was four days before even Chauvin was arrested at all. As protests raged in the interval, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman’s attempt to smooth things over with a press conference only raised tensions further, after he erroneously told reporters that “there is other evidence that does not support a criminal charge.” (His office immediately walked the remarks back, insisting Freeman had only meant that “it is critical to review all the evidence,” but the damage was done.)

The third degree murder and second degree manslaughter charges were announced on Friday. Then, on Monday, another twist: Gov. Tim Walz announced he was sending in AG Ellison to take over the Chauvin prosecution, with Freeman relegated to an assisting role. That decision came after 10 state lawmakers representing Minneapolis had asked Walz to do as much in a letter over the weekend, insisting that their constituents had lost faith in Freeman’s ability “to fairly and impartially investigate and prosecute these cases.”

Sometimes, pushing for more stringent charges is a risky move for prosecutors to make: A jury that might have convicted on a charge with a lower burden of proof might acquit instead if pushed to make a decision on a charge they don’t find to be merited. There’s little risk of that here, however: Minnesota law stipulates that a jury that finds a defendant not guilty of murder “may, upon the same indictment or complaint, find the defendant guilty of manslaughter in any degree.” 

Furthermore, the second-degree murder charge has been added to Chauvin’s case, but the third-degree charge remains operative as well.

Still, there are risks involved here. In his aforementioned piece, Sampsell-Jones notes that while the new charges “have obvious political appeal,” they are “more questionable as litigation strategy.” 

“Giving the jury more options can help, but it can also confuse them,” he writes. “Before, there were just two crimes at issue. Now, with the addition of felony murder and the assault predicate, there are four crimes at issue. That means four crimes that must be defined in jury instructions. More instructions can be confusing, and more options can make it harder for a jury to reach unanimity.” 

Worth Your Time

• Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) writes in The New York Times, “One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers…The pace of looting and disorder may fluctuate from night to night, but it’s past time to support local law enforcement with federal authority. Some governors have mobilized the National Guard, yet others refuse, and in some cases the rioters still outnumber the police and Guard combined. In these circumstances, the Insurrection Act authorizes the president to employ the military ‘or any other means’ in ‘cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws.’” In response to Cotton’s op-ed, many NYT reporters registered public objections, claiming that merely publishing the piece was a threat to some colleagues and tweeting: “Running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger.”

• Writing at National Review Online, friend of The Dispatch Yuval Levin offers a beautiful—and necessary—reminder of what we share as Americans. Our national identity, Levin writes, is drawn from a common history that simultaneously “gives us a way to understand the righteous outrage that has spilled into protests” and also “gives us a way to address it.” The way forward must be informed by looking to the wisdom of the past; it is “by seeing that we have lived a life in common, by being gentle with each other and not mistaking force for strength, that we might answer the kind of challenge we confront now.” In a moment where we lack steady-handed and circumspect leadership from many of our elites, Levin points to Abraham Lincoln for inspiration. As a president who presided over the most fraught and divisive time in American history, Lincoln has much to tell us about how to balance the competing demands of justice and order. In the anger and chaotic division of contemporary America, the two seem to be in conflict with one another—but Levin argues that “in a healthy free society, the cry for justice and the cry for order ought to be in harmony.”

• Wednesday’s Commentary podcast is really worth a listen. The crew discusses “intersectionality”—a catchall term for the academic theories that inform a significant portion of the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests—and the increasing influence of “social justice” movements over many of our cultural institutions. You may not buy such theoretical structures as intersectionality and critical race theory, but they argue that it’s important to take them seriously: Without them, it can be difficult to understand how much of the cultural left approaches politics at all. 

Presented Without Comment

Also Presented Without Comment

Toeing the Company Line

• This isn’t the first time D.C.’s faced serious civil unrest. Significant portions of the nation’s capital were burned to the ground in the aftermath of Martin Luther King’s assassination. Declan talked to Virginia Ali—whose restaurant, Ben’s Chili Bowl, was one of the few on U Street to survive the upheaval—to get her thoughts on today’s protests and what we can learn from the past. It is truly a must-read.

• Get out your Remnant bingo cards (Expand the House of Representatives! Strengthen the parties! Ban cameras in Congress!) for Jonah’s latest wonkery-filled podcast episode starring John Pitney, professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College. The podcast also features a wide-ranging discussion of Dr. Pitney’s new book, Un-American: The Fake Patriotism of Donald Trump. Come for the rank punditry, stay for the nerdy political science.

• Check out the gang’s latest episode of The Dispatch Podcast to hear them discuss the ongoing nationwide protests against police brutality, the president’s haphazard response to them and Steve King’s recent primary loss in Iowa. Plus, a debate about journalism ethics and the technically correct definition of tear gas!

• Tom Joscelyn’s new Vital Interests (🔒) is a must-read for anyone interested in the Trump administration’s new foreign policy strategy vis-à-vis China. The article catalogs how the current administration has been responding to the CCP’s continuing stranglehold on political power, which seems to be a rebuke of the long-standing assumption in American policymaking circles that economic liberalization would necessarily lead to political liberalization. 

• What is systemic racism? How much of it still exists in American society today? Jonah discusses all of that and more in his Wednesday G-File (🔒). And as a bonus, he takes on a prominent New York Times writer’s dishonest conflation of speech with violence.

• There’s still a pandemic going on, and at this point, we don’t know if it will be possible for students to return to school in the fall. On the site today, Frederick Hess and Nat Malkus look at how online learning might be worse in the fall than it was in the spring.

Let Us Know

Another week, another Dispatch Live podcast! Let us know—either in the comments or at replies@thedispatch.com—what you’re hoping for the gang to discuss tonight at 8 p.m. ET. We’ll see you there!

Reporting by Declan Garvey (@declanpgarvey), Andrew Egger (@EggerDC), Sarah Isgur (@whignewtons), Charlotte Lawson (@charlotteUVA), Nate Hochman (@njhochman), and Steve Hayes (@stephenfhayes).

Photograph of Gen. James Mattis by Steven Ferdman/Getty Images.