Lafayette Square clash, still reverberating, becomes an iconic episode in Donald Trump's presidency
President Trump, besieged by a long season of crisis, wanted to create an iconic moment.
Less than one hour after federal authorities forcibly removed peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square, the president emerged with military leaders from the fortified White House — the air still thick with the acrid smell of tear gas — to pose for pictures holding a Bible in front of a historical church.
The moment was indeed iconic. But it spawned yet another crisis for the president.
The succession of images from Lafayette Square on June 1 has reverberated for nearly two weeks — a harrowing cable news split-screen that now has enduring consequences for Trump and outsize symbolism for a nation broken after yet another black man died in the custody of police.
So indelible were the pictures that night outside the White House that Lafayette Square has come to represent Trump’s inability to meet the moment. The layers of black fencing erected to close the park and surrounding streets became Fortress White House — a physical manifestation of the president’s distance from Americans’ cries for racial justice. The bold, yellow “BLACK LIVES MATTER” lettering on 16th Street became a declaration of resistance visible from the sky. And the name Lafayette Square itself became a shorthand for so much of what many see as wrong in America.
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