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Nigerian Army Shows Video Of Trump Suggesting That Soldiers Should Shoot Rock Throwers To Defend An Alleged Massacre

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Many of us were critical of President Donald Trump’s statement that he told U.S. soldiers to shoot migrants who throw stones.  It took little time for authoritarian figures to latch on to the statement.  Nigeria’s army played the video of Trump to justify its shooting of protesters resulting in as many as 49 deaths. In the meantime, National Security adviser John Bolton gave a speech in which he praised Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s new president, as a “like-minded” leader.  The incident is reminiscent of Trump’s praise for Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte who is an international pariah for his orders to police to murder drug suspects and his bragging about his own killings.  Bolsonaro is a notorious figure who is a demonstrated racist, sexist, and homophobe who praises military dictatorship as well as torture. He also said that he would prefer his son be dead then gay.

Nigeria simply showed the tape with the instructions of “Please watch and make your deductions.”

The video shows Trump saying “We’re not going to put up with that. They want to throw rocks at our military, our military fights back . . . I told them (troops) consider it (a rock) a rifle. When they throw rocks like they did at the Mexican military and police, I say consider it a rifle.”

Nigerian troops opened fire on protesters. Muslim groups say dozens were killed while the government claims 6.

The United States has steadily lost moral standing in the world, particularly after the Bush Administration’s torture program using waterboarding, which was also cited by authoritarian countries like China to defend their own torture practices.

Shooting rock throwers has been a controversy in Israel.  It would not on its face meet the standard in the United States under Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985), where lethal force was limited to a circumstance where “the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.”  Rock throwing has not been treated as categorically a case of “significant threat of death or serious physical injury.”

 

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