Lloyd Green, who worked as opposition research counsel to George H.W. Bush’s first campaign, is sounding the alarm on the George Floyd protests and their implications for Donald Trump’s re-election. Green, who later moved to the Department of Justice when William Barr was also attorney general, claims that the recent turn of events echoes the violent protests that were sparked by the acquittals of the Los Angeles police officers who beat Rodney King.
As reported by Raw Story , Bush lost re-election in the 1992 vote following reports of 7.5 percent U.S. unemployment and the King protests — issues that Green claims bear a resemblance to the current state of America.
“Then as now, Bill Barr was attorney general and he failed to reassure. Questioned at the time about the LA riots, Barr intoned that ‘our system is fair and does not treat people differently,’ conceding that ‘our national criminal-justice system is a diverse broad one, and incorporates state systems and county systems.’”
Per the Associated Press , Barr’s hardline approach to crime has put him at odds with modern criminal justice reformers, who the publication claims are pushing for rehabilitation over incarceration. According to Green, the attorney general’s comments in 1992 did not sit well with voters, and the former Bush aide suggested a similar approach would also fail to gain traction amid the protests of Floyd’s death.
Washington DC. Riot cops are protecting the Trump White House. #dcprotest pic.twitter.com/tZJV7oIwdh
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) May 30, 2020
Despite the successes from the Gulf War, Green noted that that the chaos of the riots put both Bush and Bill Clinton behind Ross Perot just two months afterward amid an “endless news loop ” of unrest and violence, which was set against “the backdrop of a recession.”
“Gulf War triumph couldn’t save Bush from an endless news loop of urban unrest, billowing smoke, blaring sirens and broken windows cast against the backdrop of a recession,” Green wrote.
Green noted the 100,000-plus Americans who have died from the coronavirus pandemic and the 40 million-plus who are out of work as a result of the crisis. He also mentioned recent polls that have consistently put Trump behind presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden .
“The world makes for a poor scapegoat for a sitting president’s own failures, and the veterans of George H.W. Bush’s re-election campaign can tell you, because we actually have seen this movie before.”
As The Inquisitr reported, a Washington Post /ABC News poll released on Sunday showed Biden surging past Trump with 53 percent support among registered voters nationally — 10 percentage points ahead of the president, who had 43 percent support. The poll also revealed that Biden has improved his standing with key voting blocs, including suburban voters.