DOJ & Right-Wing Influencers Hope to Rally MAGA Around a Church Protest

The shooting of a Minnesota mom and the repeated brutality of masked federal agents caught on camera have turned Americans against Donald Trump’s anti-immigration effort. The president acknowledged as much in a social media post Monday night in which he complained that there is “too much media attention on ICE.” In response, right-wing influencers and the Department of Justice are trying to regain control of the narrative and rally the MAGA faithful by diverting attention from government goons terrorizing an American city to a protest at a church in St. Paul.

Their effort is a microcosm of how DOJ operates these days, and how it works closely with a propaganda machine that has become instrumental to manipulating the opinion of conservatives.

First, let’s look at how we got here: Most importantly, polling shows that the Trump administration’s narrative — that ICE focuses only on the “worst of the worst” criminals among undocumented immigrants for arrest and deportation, and that it is making American communities safer — is slipping away with every video showing heavily armed thugs roughing up “illegals,” legal residents, and citizens who have done nothing wrong.

Americans increasingly feel that ICE is too tough, that it is making communities less safe, and that the administration is prioritizing the deportation of regular people over hardened criminals. And they are definitely not buying that the killing of 37-year-old Renee Good at the hands of a government agent was justified.

In addition, it is very apparent that it’s Trump’s masked goons who are the aggressors here, which means that the administration and its allied propaganda outlets have not been able to convincingly blame protesters in Minnesota for instigating violence.

This left the president and his team with two options. The first was to get ICE to stop behaving like a bunch of lawless thugs. The second was to try to change the narrative.

Unsurprisingly, they are choosing the latter.

And Sunday’s church protest serves as a great distraction because it allows the right to do what it does best: play the victim.

Here is what happened: Former CNN personality Don Lemon filmed a few dozen protesters who crashed a service at a church in St. Paul because one of its pastors also appears to be the acting director of ICE’s local field office.

As protests go, this one was foolish. Fortunately, nobody got hurt. It was just a bunch of people yelling. And, because the individual in question wasn’t leading the service, this protest just amounted to the harassment of some parishioners.

And it should have been obvious that this footage would be used by right-wing propagandists.

You have a bunch of (mostly white) worshippers, including kids, who are disrupted by (mostly black) protesters. Throw in the involvement of Lemon, a gay African-American, and it’s just the kind of thing that gets the MAGA faithful riled up for days.

In other words, even the actual event didn’t make the protesters look good.

Of course, MAGA doesn’t deal in reality, so the version Trump supporters are spoon-fed is much more sinister.

Enter Benny Johnson, a former stooge for the Russians, who has amassed a following of millions of people with his brand of Christian nationalism, and made this story his cause du jour.

In dozens of social media posts and his podcast, he has labeled the protesters “demons and monsters,” called them a “BLM Muslim mob,” referred to the protest as a “hate crime,” pretended that this will happen to “every church in America” (as opposed to one where a pastor is a senior ICE official), and demanded that Lemon and everybody involved be prosecuted.

DOJ, which is now essentially an enforcement arm of Trump’s political operation, was happy to oblige.

On Johnson’s podcast, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said the FBI had been activated and the matter had the “highest attention” of Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Mind you, this is all happening right after Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said DOJ would not investigate the shooting death of Good.

“The Department of Justice, our civil rights unit, we don’t just go out and investigate every time an officer is forced to defend himself against somebody putting his life in danger,” he said on Sunday. “We never do.”

So, if you are keeping track, a deadly shooting won’t be investigated but a peaceful (albeit foolish) protest will get the highest attention of the attorney general and the FBI.

The preferred vehicle for locking up Lemon and the people he filmed is the FACE Act, which was passed in 1994 in response to violent protests at abortion clinics but also included places of worship to appease Republicans.

According to Johnson, this will be “the easiest prosecution in DOJ history.”

While we admire his optimism, that may not be the case.

In a nutshell, the FACE Act prohibits physically obstructing, injuring, intimidating, or interfering with a person exercising their right to worship.

At best, DOJ may charge the individuals with “interfering” with a person’s right to exercise religious freedom.

However, according to the law, “interfere with” is defined as restricting a person’s freedom of movement, and that didn’t happen in this case.

In addition, the FACE Act also specifically allows “expressive conduct,” such as peaceful picketing or demonstration that is protected by the First Amendment.

In other words, this will not be the easiest prosecution in DOJ’s history.

But Dhillon left no doubt that the Justice Department will try to throw the book at the protesters.

“We will pursue charges in this case,” she told Johnson on his podcast. “I see various crimes that have occurred.”

Dhillon mentioned the Ku Klux Klan Act, but also noted that the investigation would cover who may have funded this protest, whether mail (or email) was used to coordinate it, or whether somebody crossed state lines to participate.

If this all sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is.

And while it may appease the MAGA faithful, it’s hard to see how the rest of the public will feel about DOJ spending so many resources on an ill-advised but peaceful protest while not investigating any of the lawless behavior caught on tape by federal agents on a daily basis.