U.S. Park Police: No, we did not tear-gas protesters so Trump could cross the street (or for any other reason)

This is turning out to be one of those stories that, while it will prove apocryphal, may nevertheless take on a life of its own.

According to Everyone On The Internet, President Trump wanted to walk across the street on Monday evening to St. John’s Episcopal Church for a photo opportunity of himself with a Bible. In order for Trump to be able to do this, U.S. Park Police tear-gassed protesters in the park that sits between the White House and the church. Then Trump just strolled right through to the church.

There were always problems with this story, not least of which is the fact that tear gas is an irritant that lingers in the air for some time. If tear gas was used to disperse the crowd to make way for the president, then the president would have been exposed to the gas as he was crossing the park.

And if that had been the case, he wouldn’t have looked so free of distress in this video:

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As you see Trump emerging from the park, does he look like he’s been making his way through a waft of tear gas? No? Well, there’s a good reason for that. He wasn’t. No one was.

The U.S. Park Police have weighed in on what happened, and they made two things clear: 1. They did not use tear gas. 2. What they did do had nothing to do with the president coming through the park, which they didn’t even know about:

U.S. Park Police reportedly say protesters near the White House were pushed back by riot police on Monday evening because they were attacking police officers, not because of a visit by President Trump to a nearby church that had been set alight the night before.

Trump visited St. John’s Episcopal Church, which had been attacked by vandals on Sunday, moments after he addressed the nation and promised to restore “law and order” amid the protests and riots that have engulfed the country in the wake the death of George Floyd. But as he did so, protesters were being pushed back by riot police near Lafayette Square who charged the crowds and used what was reported as being tear gas to disperse them.

That didn’t stop much of the media from parroting the tear-gas story, of course. Here are examples from NPR and the New York Times. Unsurprisingly, these nonsense stories inspired a statement from someone known for nonsense:

Tonight the President of the United States used the American military to shoot peaceful protestors with rubber bullets & tear gas them.

For a photo op.

This is a horrifying use of presidential power against our own citizens, & has no place anywhere, let alone in America. Vote.

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 2, 2020

But none of it’s true.

Now I am not so sure this photo-op was a good idea. It ticked off the bishop of the church, who is not a Trump fan at all and ran to the media to give them the outraged quote they were only too happy to run with. Trump standing in front of a church sign holding a Bible really doesn’t mean anything. Even if you’re of the silly “optics matter” school of politics, what do you accomplish with an optic like this?

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But that doesn’t justify the media gleefully running a phony story about a crowd being tear gassed. You’d think this was the sort of thing they would fact check before they ran it, but in the age of Trump, the media doesn’t check things anymore. They just run with what they hear because their goal is not to inform, it’s to attack.

This is why only 31 percent of the population trusts them. Only 31 percent has failed to see how often they lie.