Biden to win. Historian picked every winner since ’84. Including Trump in ’16

A couple of months ago I watched the video by Alan Lichtman predicting the result of next week’s election. Interesting.

The Hill 10.22.2020

Using an earthquake forecasting model adapted to election forecasting, he uses 13 simple true/false questions, labelled the “Keys to the White House,” with six or more false keys indicating that the challenger will defeat the incumbent. Originally formulated to forecast the popular vote winner, Lichtman’s forecast modifications after the 2000 Bush-Gore election resulted in a correct forecast of Trump over Clinton in 2016.

For the 2020 election, Lichtman classifies seven of the keys to be false, indicating that Joe Biden will be elected the next president, and not just win the popular vote, which is certain to occur without the assistance of any models (think Biden’s dominance in California and New York).

Brandeis Alumni and Friends 10.7.2020

Historian Allan Lichtman ’67 has devised a system that has enabled him to predict the winner of every U.S. presidential election going back to 1984.

His prediction for the 2020 election? Look forward to President Joe Biden in 2021.

For more information on Lichtman and the 13 Keys to the White House, you can purchase his book,

Predicting the Next President: The Keys to the White House

or watch a recent video from the New York Times.

“Donald Trump will become the first sitting president since Bill Clinton beat George H.W. Bush in 1992 to lose in a reelection bid,” Lichtman, distinguished professor of history at American University, told a virtual Brandeis audience on Sept. 22.

More than 800 alumni and friends who tuned in to the virtual event heard Lichtman describe the method he calls the “13 Keys to the White House,” which he has used to correctly call each presidential election for the past four decades.

Lichtman said the Keys to the White House work in “geophysical earthquake terms.” When there is “stability, the party holding the White House keeps the White House,” and when there is an “earthquake, the party holding the White House loses.”

Each key represents a category on which the candidates are assessed, and when six or more keys go against an incumbent candidate, the rival is favored to win.

How the system was created is a story in itself. In a chance encounter at the California Institute of Technology in 1981, Lichtman met Vladimir Keilis-Borok, the world’s leading authority in earthquake prediction and head of the Institute of Pattern Recognition and Earthquake Prediction in Moscow.

The two came up with a revolutionary idea to try predicting political outcomes with earthquake prediction theories. The system has correctly called the past nine presidential elections.

The keys themselves range from an assessment of the country’s overall economic welfare and policy changes, to social perception of the current president and the country itself. Lichtman said he strives to keep his own political views out of the process, and defers to the theoretical method of the keys

In the wake of economic and social upheaval, the keys have turned against Donald Trump’s bid for reelection, Lichtman said.

“As of late 2019, less than a year to go before the election, President Donald Trump was down only four keys,” he said. “That’s two key short of predicting his defeat. But then, as we know, everything changed in America in 2020…We were hit with the worst pandemic in 100 years, by far, one that’s still going on,” as well as continued “cries for social and racial justice.”

Citing a famous quote by Herbert Hoover, he said, “‘As President, you get credit for the sunshine, and blame for the rain.’ Well, it’s raining really hard in America.”

Lichtman closed his remarks by recalling the words attributed to Abraham Lincoln: “The best way to predict your future is to choose.” He continued: “And how do you choose this year? Overcome all the barriers, all the rhetoric, all the bombast, and vote. That’s your future.”

Brandeis Trustee Monique Nelson chaired the event hosted by the Brandeis Alumni Association. A recording is available online. For more information on Lichtman and the 13 Keys to the White House, you can purchase his book, or watch a recent video from the New York Times.

https://alumni.brandeis.edu/news-events/news-archive/2020-10-07-lichtman-allan-election.html

Germany: Thousands protest against COVID-19 rules in Berlin

A segment of the German population is unhappy with restrictions imposed on the citizenry in response to The Pandemic. Ignoring social distancing and shelter in place are the norm.

The difference between Germany and America is simply stated.

The German government led by Angela Merkel, herself a scientist, has taken strong measures to combat the Covid-19 virus. The German government has modified its policies over the months while continuing to keep firm restrictions in place.

In America there is Donald Trump. Nothing more need be said except to point out this country is having a massive increase in the number of daily infections and deaths.

Deutsche Welle 10.26.2020

The German capital, has one of the nation’s highest infection rates.

Some 2,000 demonstrators gathered at Berlin’s Alexanderplatz on Sunday to protest against the German capital’s coronavirus restrictions, according to local authorities.

Berlin police said it deployed 600 officers to disperse the crowd. They said on Twitter that, “for the most part, neither minimum distance nor the obligation to cover one’s mouth and nose was observed.”

Pink heart balloons and protest signs could be seen among the protesters. Many people shouted: “We are here and we are loud because we are being robbed of our freedom” and “we are the people” among other things.

Elderly people and families with children were among the crowd, according to the DPA news agency.

Protesters were set to march down Karl-Marx-Allee to the Kosmos convention center about 2.7 kilometers (1.6 miles) away.

The venue was originally scheduled to host the World Health Summit on Sunday, but the conference was moved online due to rising infection rates in the German capital.

German Health Minister Jens Spahn and other members of the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s health authority, were scheduled to speak at the conference.

But after protesters repeatedly ignored orders to socially distance and put on masks, police began dispersing the crowd.

Some demonstrators broke away from the group and gathered at Kosmos, which was closed off with fences.

Counterprotesters could also be seen outside the convention center. Most of them were wearing black clothing and shouting “Nazis out.”

Berlin has seen multiple protests against coronavirus restrictions, with one at the end of August attracting more than 30,000 demonstrators.

Earlier on Sunday, Berlin authorities said bottles and other incendiary devices were thrown at a building for the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases.

Another demonstration that was expected to draw 10,000 protesters was scheduled to take place on Sunday evening near the Berlin zoo, but police said it was called off.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-thousands-protest-against-covid-19-rules-in-berlin/a-55392704

My copy of “All the King’s Men” and its omen: JFK assassination

Published in 1946 “All the King’s Men” was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. It tells the story of a demagogic politician who is assassinated. The fictionalized tale is loosely based on the life of Louisiana Governor Huey Long. He, too, was assassinated.

In 1963 I was in high school. I had borrowed “All the King’s Men” from the school library in early November. It’s due date was November 22, 1963.

That day, President John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. I was so shocked by this coincidence that I never returned the book to the school library. I paid the school $1.85 so I could own it in perpetuity.

An odd fact was its due date – November 22, 1963 – was stamped upside down. A photo of that stamp is pictured above.

Wall Street Journal review of All the King’s Men – Michael Dirda

Half a lifetime ago, I read Robert Penn Warren’s “All the King’s Men” and thought it just breathtakingly wonderful, so much so that I spent money I didn’t have to buy the 1946 first edition in a fine dust jacket. Last week I decided to reread it, partly because the book is widely viewed as our finest novel about American politics. How, I wondered, does this Pulitzer Prize winner look in the tumultuous fall of 2020?

Short answer: It’s still amazing.

As many people know, if only from the Oscar-winning 1949 movie, this is the story of Willie Stark, fictional governor of an unnamed Southern state whose political career loosely recalls that of Louisiana’s real-life Huey Long. Narrated in 1939 by Stark’s chief lieutenant, Jack Burden, the book depicts the transformation of an idealistic backwoods hick into a consummate political operator. While chronicling the rise of “the Boss,” Jack—a former newspaperman and onetime Ph.D. candidate in American history—gradually reveals pieces of his own past, notably his memories of idyllic summers spent with his childhood friends, Adam and Anne Stanton. Structurally intricate, the novel effortlessly segues back and forth among various periods of the 1920s and ’30s, climaxing in a succession of shocks and revelations. When you finish “All the King’s Men,” you feel, like its surviving characters, that your soul has been tried in the furnace.

But when you start the book, the first thing you notice is Warren’s prose, which glories in its showstopping, even showoffy magnificence and virtuosity. There are long, rolling sentences like coloratura arias and passages that would do a tent-preacher proud, as well as conversations among good ol’ boys that are sheer vulgar poetry, and, throughout, an irresistible narrative exuberance riding on an undercurrent of nostalgia and wistfulness. A smidgen of the book’s style can be heard when the Boss orders Jack to dig up some dirt on the upright Judge Irwin. What if there isn’t any? Not possible, says Willie: “Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something.”

Willie Stark rises to power by reminding small-town yokels that he is one of them. He learns to retain power, however, through favors, deals, bribes, threats and blackmail. When one of his appointees turns greedy, he “fixes” the offender so well that “his unborn great-grandchildren will wet their pants on this anniversary and not know why.” When threatened with impeachment, Willie rallies his supporters for a raucous protest march on the capital. He even installs his own yes-men on the state’s Supreme Court. And yet, above all else, this sweating, blubber-lipped rascal yearns to build a completely free, absolutely state-of-the-art hospital.

In this, Willie is utterly sincere. He truly wants to help folks who never got anything but promises from previous elected officials, especially ineffectual, lily-white Southern aristocrats. Unlike them, Willie is willing to get his hands dirty, sometimes very dirty. Thus Warren raises that most fundamental of political questions: Do the ends justify the means? Is Willie Stark a redneck demagogue who regularly flouts the rule of law? Or is he, as all the most sympathetic characters in the book maintain, a great man?

Not that he isn’t a flawed human being: Willie cheats on his schoolteacher wife, crows about the gridiron prowess of his oafish son, and shows himself to be nothing if not ambitious, already envisioning a run for the presidency. He emerges, in short, as that ambiguous American archetype: The romantic dreamer with a ruthless core. “All the King’s Men” belongs on the same shelf as “The Great Gatsby” and “The Godfather.”

To enlarge his book’s scope Warren surrounds Willie and Jack with a picture gallery of Southern “types”: a street-corner evangelist; an aging, much-married belle; a hardscrabble dame with Machiavellian political savvy; an almost saintly doctor. Today’s readers, however, will notice that the only Black characters are nameless “colored” servants. Still, Jack’s transcription of a pre-Civil War diary does partly confront the South’s racist past. In it a slave learns the truth about her master’s death, with consequences that underscore the brutality and horror of her condition.

I mention Jack Burden so often because much of this story is also his. The account of how he and Anne Stanton fell in love and then lost each other may be the most lyrically beautiful piece of writing in all American literature. When Jack does uncover “something” about Judge Irwin, he also learns something about his own past and, following a time of sorrows, frees himself from recurrent existential despair.

Almost 75 years have now passed since “All the King’s Men” first appeared, yet Warren’s book continues to deserve its reputation as a great American political novel. And actually, it’s something even better: a great American novel, period.

—Mr. Dirda is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book columnist for the Washington Post.

A photo from the 1949 Academy Award winning movie. Broderick Crawford, fourth from left won an Academy Award for best actor. The film also won the award for best picture and supporting actress, Mercedes McCambridge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_King%27s_Men

Lincoln Project’s Trump Message to New York. “Suffer…That’s Their Problem”

Every Picture Tells a Story – Ongoing Series

The Lincoln Project, a band of well connected disenchanted Republicans, have been causing more grief for Trump than the Democrats could have imagained.

The billboard, now emblazoned in New York City, has sent The Republicans in general and Trump in particular into paroxysms of anger, angst and dismay.

https://lincolnproject.us/

Belgian Foreign Minister Sophie Wilmes in intensive care with COVID-19

The Covid-19 Pandemic is totally non discriminatory in its relentless march around the planet.

Gender, race, age, income are no defense against the encroaching monster as the Pandemic nears the one year mark.

The latest high level government official to be struck down is the 45 year old Belgian Foreign Minister.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 10.22.2020

Belgium, a country of 11.5 million inhabitants, has been severely hit by the coronavirus and is currently seeing a sharp rise in new cases. More than 10,000 people have died from coronavirus-related complications in Belgium.

Belgian Foreign Minister Sophie Wilmes, the former prime minister who led the country’s fight against coronavirus, is in intensive care with COVID-19, her office said Thursday.

Wilmes, 45, who handed the reins over to Prime Minister Alexander De Croo earlier this month and is now Belgian’s foreign minister, announced last week that she had tested positive.

She was admitted to the hospital on Wednesday. Her spokeswoman said Wilmes is in a “stable” condition and conscious and that her “condition is not worrying.”

“She is conscious and she can communicate,” her spokeswoman said.

The announcement of Wilmes’ positive test came after she attended a face-to-face summit with her fellow EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg on October 12. Her Austrian counterpart, Alexander Schallenberg, has also tested positive for COVID-19.

She did not mention the summit when announcing her positive test last Saturday, instead saying she thought she got infected within her family circle.

Wilmes was in charge of a caretaker government when the first wave of infections hit Belgium this spring.

Wilmes became Belgium’s first female prime minister in October last year when she succeeded Charles Michel.

First appointed as a caretaker, she then led a government with special powers to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

Born in Brussels, Wilmes started her political career as a local councilor in the Belgian capital and joined the federal government in 2015 as budget minister.

She stepped down earlier this month when De Croo was sworn in after nearly 18 months of complex negotiations among parties divided along linguistic as well as political lines.

https://www.dw.com/en/belgian-foreign-minister-sophie-wilmes-in-intensive-care-with-covid-19/a-55358381

Trump threatens to humiliate himself. Release 60 Minutes train wreck interview

I believe that Bess Levin at Vanity Fair is the latter day Hunter Thompson, whose book Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 I referenced in yesterday’s Post.

Bess’ writing is funny, sharp, knowledgeable and politically astute. The following piece about Trump’s take down by Lesley Stahl and its ongoing drama is illustrative of her reportorial skills.

Her reporting is amongst the best of the sordid political effort by Trump to salvage his disastrous presidency.

Excerpted from Vanity Fair 10.21.2020 – Bess Levin

As you’ve probably heard by now, on Tuesday, Donald Trump abruptly walked out of an interview with 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl and then failed to return for a previously scheduled appearance he was supposed to tape for the show with Mike Pence. Later he tweeted a surreptitiously recorded video of Stahl not wearing a mask and shamed her for not adhering to the protocols he’s ignored for the past seven months, seemingly trying to damage the credibility of the widely respected journalist before their sit-down aired.

Obviously, none of this is normal; according to the Washington Post, the president was unhappy with Stahl’s tough line of questioning regarding his disastrous handling of the coronavirus pandemic, his feud with Dr. Anthony Fauci, and his attacks on Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, in addition to the fact that she pointed out how his absurd claims about Hunter Biden, as well as the Obama administration spying on his campaign, are bullshit. And while the interview isn’t set to air on 60 Minutes until Sunday, the president has apparently decided he might just preempt the network and humiliate himself, releasing the train wreck early.

It’s not clear what “electoral intrusion” is, but it would seem Trump believes that asking legitimate questions of someone campaigning for another four years in office constitutes some kind of crime, and it probably won’t be long before he demands that Attorney General Bill Barr indict Stahl. Per the Post.

When Trump first walked in, Stahl looked at him and said, “Are you ready for a tough interview?” The president believes 60 Minutes will cut the interview in an unflattering way and has been talking all afternoon about how to preempt the footage, said the person familiar with the circumstances. After 45 minutes, Trump looked at staff members and said, “I think we’re done, do you guys agree?” Stahl believed the walk with Pence was still going forward, but Trump left the room and later complained to aides that [Joe] Biden would have an easier interview and that 60 Minutes would “cut it up to make him look bad,” according to an aide.

While three aides told the Post that the president overreacted and someone with knowledge of the interview said it contains no bombshell revelations, Trump reportedly “complained about it all day.” And because he’s a sociopath, he “told aides he wanted to go after Stahl and brainstormed ideas after the session with a group of aides in the Oval Office,” as though he literally had nothing else to do with his time other than plot his revenge on a journalist.

As for why the White House has its own recording of the interview, CBS was told it was for “archival purposes only,” and not that it would be used by a vindictive president who’s worried that people might find out he’s crazy and incompetent right before the election.

The president is now trying to claim he schooled Stahl, or something, by tweeting a photo of her looking at a bunch of blank papers he says show all the work he’d done on healthcare.

For those of you keeping up at home, this is at least the third time Trump has tweeted photographic “evidence” of something that’s just been a bunch of blank paper, the other times being when he signed “documents” with nothing on them from Walter Reed and when he held a press conference shortly before being inaugurated and claimed a pile of folders filled blank sheets of paper contained his “business plan.” In 2016, he made a big show of signing stacks of papers that he said were his tax returns, and while it’s not clear if the pages were blank, they were most definitely fake considering that was one of the years he paid basically nothing in taxes.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/10/donald-trump-lesley-stahl-interview#intcid=recommendations_vf-trending-legacy_dc6d7d14-616d-4543-9c50-b4b129846f32_popular4-1

Trump cuts a ‘60 Minutes’ interview short, taunts Lesley Stahl on Twitter.

Is this guy toast or what? The Audience of One is soon to become the Audience of None.

I just started reading, again, Hunter Thompson’s classic work of political art ‘Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72.’

It is a must read as we watch the collapse of the insane Trump presidency.

Hunter S. Thompson, who committed suicide in 2005 at the age of 67, would have been the perfect writer to put his Gonzo journalism to work memorializing this crazy political year. He would be cheering the downfall of the Trump presidency.

Undoubtedly Mr. Thompson will be giving an emphatic middle finger salute to the departing Trump from his place in Elysium.

New York Times 10.20.2020

President Trump abruptly cut off an interview with the “60 Minutes” star Lesley Stahl at the White House on Tuesday and then taunted her on Twitter, posting a short behind-the-scenes video of her at the taping and noting that she had not been wearing a mask.

Mr. Trump then threatened to post his interview with Ms. Stahl ahead of its intended broadcast date on Sunday evening, calling it “FAKE and BIASED.”

The spectacle of a president, two weeks out from Election Day, picking a fight with the nation’s most popular television news program began on Tuesday after Mr. Trump grew irritated with Ms. Stahl’s questions, according to two people familiar with the circumstances of the taping.

One person briefed on what took place said that Mr. Trump had spent more than 45 minutes filming with Ms. Stahl and her CBS News crew, and that the taping had not wrapped up when the president’s aides had expected it to.

So Mr. Trump cut the interview short, and then declined to participate in a “walk and talk” segment with Ms. Stahl and Vice President Mike Pence, the people said.

It appeared that Ms. Stahl’s approach did not sit well with the president. Hours later, Mr. Trump said on Twitter that he was considering posting the interview with Ms. Stahl “PRIOR TO AIRTIME!” He described it as a “terrible Electoral Intrusion” and suggested that his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., had been treated less harshly by journalistic interlocutors.

Mr. Trump also posted a six-second video clip of Ms. Stahl at the White House, writing: “Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes not wearing a mask in the White House after her interview with me. Much more to come.”

In fact, Ms. Stahl had worn a mask at the White House up until the start of her taping with Mr. Trump, including when she first greeted the president, according to a person familiar with the interview. The video posted by Mr. Trump showed Ms. Stahl immediately after the interview ended, as she conferred with two CBS producers, both wearing masks.

The CBS crew was tested for the coronavirus before entering the White House on Tuesday, the person said.

So Mr. Trump cut the interview short, and then declined to participate in a “walk and talk” segment with Ms. Stahl and Vice President Mike Pence, the people said.

“He’s a like dog they’re trying to keep comfortable in the final days of his life.”

I hope so.

Vanity Fair – The Hive 10.19.2020

Even the president’s own campaign is resigned to its fate. “He’s a dog they’re trying to keep comfortable in the final days of his life.”

If you’d ignored every single poll that’s come out over the last several months predicting the outcome of the 2020 election, and only listened to Donald Trump, you might think the president had a snowball’s chance in hell of beating Joe Biden on November 3. In reality, the outlook for Trump is grim: The latest polls show Biden ahead by double digits and leading in battleground states. What’s more, Trump is down with white voters, who he won by a whopping 20 points in 2016. And while the president talks a big, delusional game at rallies, even his campaign staffers apparently know that come November 3, they’re all going to be unemployed.

The New York Times reports that “away from their candidate and the television cameras, some of Mr. Trump’s aides are quietly conceding just how dire his political predicament appears to be.” Midlevel aides are reportedly asking around about postelection jobs on Capitol Hill, aware that there is unlikely to be a second Trump administration for them to work in.

In what may be the saddest internal reflection of the president’s prospects, some of his lieutenants are said to be resigned to lose and believe that the best thing they can do in the final two weeks is to “keep the president occupied, happy, and off Twitter as much as possible,” like he’s a dog they’re trying to keep comfortable in the final days of his life. But of course, staying off of Twitter and on message is something Trump is constitutionally incapable of, even if it would be to his benefit:

Instead of delivering a focused closing message aimed at changing people’s perceptions about his handling of the coronavirus, or making a case for why he can revive the economy better than Mr. Biden can, Mr. Trump is spending the remaining days on a familiar mix of personal grievances, attacks on his opponents and obfuscations. He has portrayed himself as a victim, dodged questions about his own coronavirus testing, attacked his attorney general and the F.B.I. director, and equivocated on the benefits of mask-wearing.

Rather than drawing a consistent contrast with Mr. Biden on the economy, strategists say, the president’s preference is to attack Mr. Biden’s son Hunter over his business dealings and to hurl personal insults like “Sleepy Joe” against a candidate whose favorability ratings are much higher than Mr. Trump’s.

“A lot of Republican consultants are frustrated because we want the president’s campaign to be laser-focused on the economy,” David Kochel, a Republican strategist in Iowa told the Times. “Their best message is: Trump built a great economy” and that the coronavirus damaged it, and Trump will do a better job restoring it than Biden. Instead, the president apparently thinks he’s going to win over voters by refusing to denounce a conspiracy theory that claims Democrats are running a Satanic, child sex-trafficking cult and another that accuses Biden of having Seal Team Six killed to cover up the fact that Osama Bin Laden is alive and the Obama administration took out his body double. Or blathering on at length about his opponent’s son and claiming, without a hint of irony, that Biden’s family is a “criminal enterprise.” The base “loves the stuff about Hunter Biden, laptops and Mayor Giuliani,” Kochel said. “But they’re already voting for Trump.”

The problem with having an unhinged, disturbed candidate like Trump running for office is that he’s not just the candidate, he’s also basically running the campaign—and he’s really bad at it!

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/10/donald-trump-2020-prospects

“If you believe that you’re gonna get your heart broken everyday of your life.”

I am watching The Trial of the Chicago Seven. The story is riveting in recounting the conspiracy trial of the so called Chicago Seven which began in September 1969 and continued until February 1970.

Two Wikipedia links to the trial and its aftermath are attached. One is about the actual history of the trial. The other is about the movie now streaming on Netflix.

The two hour plus film is a good history lesson for those who weren’t here at the time. It is also a walk down memory lane for those who lived through that period in American political history.

It is also a reminder that the zeal of government to persecute protest continues unabated to this day.

The following snippet of dialogue is just one example of the excellent script.

Colloquy in The Trial of the Chicago Seven on Netflix.
Paralegal. Answers the Phone, “Conspiracy office.”
William Kunstler. “Maybe you don’t want to call it the, uh, conspiracy office.”
Paralegal. “They understand irony and appreciate the humor.”
William Kunstler. “I wouldn’t count on it.”
Paralegal. “Most people are smart, Bill.”
William Kunstler. “If you believe that you’re gonna get your heart broken everyday of your life.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Seven

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial_of_the_Chicago_7

Trump’s demented legacy. Americans fighting each other in the streets

This is the end game of Trump’s perverted soon to be dumped into the ashbin of history presidency.

Americans fighting each other in the streets.

The impending defeat of this semi-illiterate wanna be Fascist dictator will leave a stain on this country which may never fully heal. Trump will soon join the ranks of the crackpot tinpot moronic despots who are reviled in the history books.

San Francisco Chronicle 10.17.2020

San Francisco police said six people were injured, including three officers, during clashes between a small group of President Trump’s supporters and a larger crowd of counterprotesters Saturday near Civic Center. No arrests had been made by early Saturday evening.

The pro-Trump protest, billed as a free speech rally, drew people from Team Save America wearing “Make America Great Again” hats and carrying pro-police “Thin Blue Line” flags. They set up a stage at the Federal Building at U.N. Plaza, but dozens of black-clad demonstrators quickly gathered to oppose the group, holding signs that read, “Smash Fascism” and “Nazi Trump Fuck Off!”

The rally was organized in protest of what the Team Save America group described as censorship of conservative views by social media companies. About 10 people were on the speech-giving side of a police barricade.

They were eventually outnumbered by hundreds of counterprotesters. Rumors spread on social media that the Proud Boys, a pro-Trump group known for participating in street brawls, would appear at the rally. The rally’s organizer, Philip Anderson, has identified himself on social media as a member of the Proud Boys.

Tensions rapidly built up as demonstrators surrounded some members of the pro-Trump group, chasing them behind a barricade set up to separate the groups.

A short time later, the opposition group confronted Anderson, arguing about fascism and the police.

After about 10 minutes, the two men started walking away, followed by the black-clad demonstrators. Some people threw punches at the men as they retreated behind a police barrier. A couple dozen officers holding batons and carrying zip-tie handcuffs on their belts lined a barricade on the stage side.

At about 1 p.m., Anderson took the stage. He was quickly greeted by a barrage of plastic water bottles and glass bottles thrown over the barricade. He had gotten punched in the face, and later posted photos on social media of his broken teeth.

“You knocked my tooth out, but you’re saying Black lives matter,” said Anderson, who is Black. “I love America and I love this country, but I want free speech.”

At least one Trump supporter was taken from the rally in an ambulance after being attacked by a counterprotester. His condition was not immediately known.

The speech ended after about 15 minutes, and counterprotesters were left confronting a line of riot-gear-clad police.

San Francisco police said that one rally participant was “assaulted,” and that opposition protesters had thrown items including “plastic bottles filled with unknown liquid,” metal cans and eggs at rally participants. Police shut down the event due to the violence, the police statement said.

After the speeches ended, the counterprotesters moved to block McAllister Street as the pro-Trump crowd left the area. Shields were handed out among counterprotesters as riot police formed a line to move the crowd off the streets. At one point, pepper spray was used — its origin was unclear, though both sides blamed the other — causing coughs.

By about 1:30 p.m., the counterprotesters moved west along Market Street toward Twitter headquarters with a line of shields in the front that read, “We keep us safe.”

“All cops are bullshit.”A crowd chanted as it moved down Market Street toward Twitter headquarters, where Team Save America was said to be planning another anti-censorship rally later.

Around 2:30 p.m., a scuffle erupted at the corner of Market and Polk streets. A video taken by bystander Brynn Atlas, obtained by The Chronicle, shows two men, one with a MAGA hat, walking into the crowd at Twitter headquarters. In the video, a counterprotester appears to notice the hat and sends water from a bottle toward the man. Another grabs the hat, while another swings, as counterprotesters chase the two men down the street into a gathering of police.

When counterprotesters, one waving a partially burned Thin Blue Line flag, moved toward the police and the two men receiving medical attention, police called for backup. Sirens came screaming down side streets to Market Street, and about 50 officers in a line, batons raised, marched steadily forward, effectively pushing counterprotesters toward South Van Ness Avenue. Another line did the same toward 10th Street. After a couple of heated minutes with the counterprotesters yelling at silent officers, the counterprotesters retreated.

Police cleared out from Market Street by 3:15 p.m., and by 4:30 p.m. the street was back open and no protesters were to be seen.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Punches-thrown-as-left-wing-protesters-show-up-at-15655621.php