'Oath breaker' epithet shows strain between MAGA and law enforcement

MAGA Republicans have violently swung from "back the blue" to "defund the FBI" in only a couple of years as the party of "law and order" has shifted priorities.

That argument was made in a New Yorkerstory by Luke Mogelson that was excerpted from his book The Storm Is Here: An American Crucible. The author recounts covering the Michigan Militia's protests against police early in the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests after the murder of George Floyd, and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters seeking to block the transition of power.

"As President Trump and his allies portrayed demands for racial justice as the sinister work of subversives intent on sowing chaos—much as segregationists had dismissed civil-rights activists as Communist agitators—backing the blue became analogous with opposing the left," he wrote. "After my stay in Michigan, I spent a month covering antifascist protests in Portland, Oregon, where demonstrations against the local police department were punctuated by clashes with Trump supporters, including members of the Proud Boys, who presented themselves as allies of law enforcement. As anti-lockdowners had shown in Michigan, however, this alliance was conditional and tended to break down whenever laws intruded on conservative priorities. Right-wingers rationalized the inconsistency by assigning the epithet 'oath breaker' to any American in uniform who executed his duties in a manner they disliked."

But by December of 2020, the conditional relationship had splintered.

"About a month after the 2020 Presidential election, at a rally in Washington, D.C., I followed hundreds of Trump supporters as they marauded on the streets around the White House, assaulting pedestrians, vandalizing Black churches, and seeking to engage antifascists in fist fights. The Metropolitan Police, the Park Police, and the Capitol Police did their best to keep the two sides separate. Their interference enraged the Trump supporters, who called the officers “piggies,” “c*nts,” and “pieces of sh*t.” Some of the insults were indistinguishable from those shouted by leftists in Portland," he wrote. "Many of these same Trump supporters returned to D.C. on January 5, 2021, and by then it was clear that law enforcement would no longer be exempt from their belligerence. Online, Proud Boys made plain that their days of backing the blue were over. “F*ck these DC Police,” one commented."

On Jan. 6, Mogelson heard a man shout through a bullhorn, “You’re a bunch of oath breakers! You’re traitors to the country!”

Read the full excerpt.