Tag: musk

‘Sandwich guy’ and the turning tide

On a street in Washington, D.C., on the night of Sunday, Aug. 10, a man threw a wrapped submarine sandwich directly at a Customs and Border Protection officer, striking said officer on the ballistic vest covering his chest. The sandwich fell to the ground, and the sandwich thrower turned and took off running at what seems in video to be a rather relaxed pace. Federal agents chased him and had him in handcuffs in no time. The assailant, Sean Charles Dunn, 37, was a Justice Department employee at the time of the confrontation and was swiftly fired by an exultant Attorney General Pam Bondi.

This confrontation occurred during President Trump’s “crime emergency” in D.C., a one-month period during which the president deployed to the streets of the city law enforcement officers from a variety of federal agencies — including Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — supposedly to back up the D.C. police.

During the election campaign last year, Trump had declared that D.C. was a “nightmare of murder and crime,” and he vowed to clean it up if reelected. Not much happened regarding that pledge until August, when a group of feral teenagers from D.C. and nearby parts assaulted and tried to carjack 19-year-old Edward Coristine, one of the employees of Elon Musk’s unofficial Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

Coristine was beaten bloody during the mob assault, which took place on a public street, and Trump was incensed. That attack was the trigger for his declaration of a crime emergency in D.C. In addition to law enforcement officers drawn from federal agencies, the president deployed armed National Guard troops to walk city streets.

The crime emergency was limited by statute to 30 days, and it ended without an extension. Trump then declared, ridiculously, that there was “no crime” in D.C. “It took 12 days to solve the problem,” he told reporters early last month. Nonetheless, he is keeping the National Guard deployed here until next year. If crime has been banished from the city, why keep the Guard in the streets? Oh, right; that’s not about crime at all. How could I have forgotten? It’s about optics and Trump’s demented posturing as a strongman — and about his determination to intimidate a Democrat-led city. And since D.C. lies just outside his windows at the White House, this city is a convenient place for Trump to exhibit his plans.

Meanwhile, the kind of criminal and antisocial behaviors that are a permanent drag on the quality of life of law-abiding Washingtonians continue at their regular pace: The city stinks from end to end with the stench of weed being smoked in public (the emergency order and police surge did nothing about that); package thieves continue to run rampant (the emergency order and police surge did nothing about that. On the same weekend that Trump spoke of having solved the crime problem in “12 days,” 17-year-old Jermaine Durbin and 26-year-old Jerome Myles were killed in separate shootings in D.C.); street robberies and assaults continue (the emergency order and police surge did nothing about that); homicides continue (the emergency order and police surge did not stop that); the city’s open-air drug markets and the drug trade, which are a factor in homicides, otherwise still flourish (the emergency order and police surge did nothing about that). And so much else that should not be happening does continue to happen.

Local Washington has been intensely hostile to federal Washington in the second incarnation of the Trump administration. The type of messaging shown here has proliferated in the city since President Trump declared a 30-day crime emergency here in late summer. Photo by Gilbert Dunkley

Local Washington reacted with anger to Trump’s emergency declaration and the deployment of extra law enforcement personnel. Locally, the security action was decried as a hostile occupation — not because Washingtonians love crime but because they do not trust Donald Trump. They regard him, with good reason, as a deceiver with toxic motives driving malignant schemes.

It was in this climate that Dunn threw his sandwich at a CBP officer and became a local hero.

The U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, the former Fox television host Jeanine Pirro, seized on Dunn’s sandwich throwing to illuminate the Trump administration’s toughness on crime (this is absurd, considering Jan. 6 and Trump’s own grant of hundreds of pardons to supporters of his who committed crimes on that infamous day). Pirro’s office tried to persuade a grand jury in D.C. to indict Dunn on a charge of felony assault. The grand jury demurred. Undaunted, Pirro’s office brought a charge of misdemeanor assault against Dunn (a misdemeanor charge in D.C. does not require a grand jury indictment). The case went to trial, and a D.C. jury acquitted Dunn on Thursday.

“Sandwich guy” Sean C. Dunn is iconized in a style channeling Banksy and intifada; seen in Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C., on Friday, Nov. 7, 2025.

This acquittal was a clear rebuke by a selection of D.C. residents of the Trump administration’s fascistic approach to governance. And the chastisement in a court of law occurred in the same week in which Democrats made a powerful showing in elections in multiple states and municipalities. In Virginia, former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, whom Trump had denounced as “a disaster,” handily defeated Republican candidate Winsome Earle-Sears, whom Trump had described as “very good” and “excellent.”

In the Virginia lieutenant governor’s race, Democrat Ghazala Hashmi beat Republican John Reid, also handily. But the strongest signal-sending Democratic victory anywhere nationally on the day may have been that of former Virginia state delegate Jay Jones in the contest to be Virginia’s next attorney general. Jones defeated the incumbent, Republican Jason Miyares, by just over six percentage points. What is remarkable about this outcome is that Virginians elected Jones despite his being engulfed in a damaging text-message scandal in the closing weeks of the campaign. Here is a synopsis from Politico:

In August 2022, Jones wrote about shooting then-Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert in text messages he sent to Republican state Del. Carrie Coyner. The texts, which were first reported by National Review and subsequently viewed by The Washington Post, have not independently been confirmed by POLITICO, but Jones has not questioned their veracity and has publicly apologized for them.

“Three people, two bullets. Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot,” Jones wrote. “Gilbert gets two bullets to the head.”

“Jay,” Coyner responded. “Please stop.”

In a normal time, Jones would have been out of the race very shortly after Coyner made the text messages public with a month left in the campaign. Jones stayed in. He weathered such public outrage as resulted and the Republican Party broadsides that emerged and ultimately won the race. Coyner, meanwhile, lost her reelection bid to a Democrat in the election on Tuesday.

For a majority of Virginia voters on this occasion, Jones’s dreadful sentiments could be overlooked. Perhaps it was a case of “needs must when the devil drives,” and the devil in this scenario would be the moral bankruptcy and fecklessness of the Republican Party in general. The fact is that Republicans are in no position to lecture anyone about moral failings and scandalous behavior. They do avidly support Trump, after all. By so doing, they show us exactly who they are.

The voters’ willingness to overlook Jones’s egregious conduct is an index of the level of their disgust with the Republican camp headed by Donald Trump. This is a stark warning to the U.S. political right of the electoral bloodbath that is coming for it in the midterm elections next November.

Meanwhile on Tuesday, in New Jersey, Democrat Mikie Sherrill defeated Republican Jack Ciattarelli in the governor’s race. And in New York City, Zohran Mamdani, running on the Democratic Party ticket, won the race for mayor over some guy named Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa.

In a multitude of races in multiple states, Democrats triumphed in a wave that clearly signals wide national discontent with the performance and behavior of Donald Trump and his administration — and the GOP nationally.

One of the other seismic Democratic wins occurred in Pennsylvania’s Bucks County, where “voters elected a Democratic district attorney for the first time since the 1800s, part of a Democratic sweep of every county office, including controller and recorder of deeds,” the Washington Post reported on Saturday.

Something is happening in the country. The political tide is turning against the MAGA-captured Republican Party. The poisonous MAGA mindset as seen in ruinous policies emanating from Donald Trump and his government are driving an awakening of courage and reason in the country.

Some would call it a backlash. I call it overdue and say, “How sweet it is!”

The Jeffrey Epstein affair is being kept alive in Washington, D.C., via tools such as graffiti and posters. This item was seen at 20th Street and S Street NW in D.C. on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025. The telephone number on the poster showing Epstein and Donald Trump belongs to the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation, which is based in D.C. Photo by Gilbert Dunkley

To the glory of Trump — enemy of labor

If you go to the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Labor here in Washington and stand well back across from the building in that mini park on Constitution Avenue to get a panoramic view of the edifice, you will see two enormous banners honoring American workers for the nation’s 250th anniversary next year. Each banner also bears the image of a U.S. president: on the left is Donald Trump; on the right is Theodore Roosevelt.

Roosevelt was a labor reformer even before he became governor of New York, and before he would become U.S. president. But before that, as a member of the New York State Assembly, he was at first a reliable anti-union vote. Then he had an epiphany when he began learning about ordinary people’s working conditions. His education included visiting workplaces and seeing firsthand the appalling conditions that prevailed.

Here is a description of Roosevelt’s work in labor reform, taken from a blog at the Theodore Roosevelt Center that credits a report at the Library of Congress as its ultimate source:
“As Governor of New York, Roosevelt further pushed for labor reform, especially through enforcement of existing legislation. He pushed for the passage of employers’ liability and sweatshop laws, essentially a continuation of the crusade he had picked up from his meetings with [the union leader] Samuel Gompers. Although he could not get [those] passed, he was able to sign a number of individual bills regulating tenement house manufacturing. Other bills he signed regulated the labor of women and children, as well as that of teachers and municipal employees. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, he passed and strictly enforced an eight-hour law.”

Under President Theodore Roosevelt in 1903, a Department of Commerce and Labor was formed. In 1913, under President William Howard Taft, the separate Department of Labor was formed, and the original “Commerce and Labor” entity continued as the singular Department of Commerce. The Department of Labor, to which Roosevelt could rightly claim parentage, says this about itself:
“The Department of Labor (DOL) administers federal labor laws to guarantee workers’ rights to fair, safe, and healthy working conditions, including minimum hourly wage and overtime pay, protection against employment discrimination, and unemployment insurance.”

President Theodore Roosevelt has a highly positive legacy in relation to labor. But what about Trump? What does the record show so far of his attitude to labor?

President Donald Trump is featured on a banner at the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Labor, Washington, D.C., on Friday, Aug. 29, 2025. A corresponding banner out of the frame to the right shows President Theodore Roosevelt. A Department of Commerce and Labor was established under Roosevelt in 1903. The Department of Labor was established as a separate Cabinet-level entity in 1913. Photo by Gilbert Dunkley

In a word: enmity.

It is rich that his face is plastered on a banner at the Labor Department building honoring the American worker. Trump has a bad history with labor, starting in his business life, where he was sued by individuals and by small contractors who alleged that he stiffed them by refusing to pay for work they had completed. In his first term as president, he attacked the labor unions representing federal employees and also treated those employees — essentially his own workers — as enemies of the American people. The courts helped to restrain him that time around.

In his second term, he came loaded for bear. He returned to Washington accompanied by Elon Musk as his hatchet man. Musk set about sacking tens of thousands of federal workers. There is a civilized way to reduce headcount, and the abrupt and cruel way it has been done in a matter of months this year by the Trump administration is not it. The result has been lives upended and multiple government agencies thrown into chaos, their work undercut and their remaining employees feeling terrorized.

And Trump’s tariffs are coming for the American private-sector worker. Watch what tariff-induced inflation will do to consumer demand, the profitability of companies, the cost of living, and, ultimately, the level of unemployment.

Trump is no friend of American workers. He is a fool flailing about pretending to be doing work when in fact he is causing destructive chaos. That his face appears on a banner honoring this country’s workers for the nation’s 250th anniversary is an insult to American labor.

Look for Trump’s image to continue to occupy top billing as the celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary advances. For him, the event is not about the country’s endurance as an experiment in democracy. It is simply about the glory of Donald Trump.