RIGHT-WINGERS: ORDINARY CROWD CONTROL = THE DEATH OF AMERICA

It's quite possible that Donald Trump won't be arrested today. Fox News says the arrest will come next week, citing law enforcement sources -- people you'd imagine are fans of Fox and might be inclined to tell Fox the truth.

But yesterday, right-wingers began flipping out in response to a series of tweets from CBS's Robert Costa:

Steel barricades arriving outside Manhattan Criminal Court @CBSNews pic.twitter.com/aWESUZ01fU

— Robert Costa (@costareports) March 20, 2023

Charlie Kirk and Andy Ngo retweeted Costa's video. The headline at the Post Millennial was "BREAKING: NYPD Erects Barricades Outside Manhattan Courthouse Ahead of Potential Trump Arrest." At PJMedia, a post from Robert Spencer was headlined "It’s On: NYPD and Capitol Police Putting Up Barricades, Expecting Riots When Trump Is Arrested."

Spencer's commentary was as calm and measured as you'd expect from the founder of Jihad Watch:

America’s descent to banana republic status, with the ruling regime having its principal opponent arrested on bogus charges, may not happen on Tuesday, but it very much looks as if it is going to happen this week. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) was busy on Monday setting up steel barriers outside the Manhattan Criminal Court as if it fully expects (and may even be hoping for) patriots to come out in force to protest against the destruction of our free republic and the weaponization of our justice system as a tool of partisan politics. No one seems to be backing away from the brink.

... The Democrats, having spent decades hollowing out our Constitutional protections, are now planning on doing a victory dance upon their empty shell and casting any people who dare to protest in their next Reichstag Fire production....

"Casting any people who dare to protest in their next Reichstag Fire production"? All this over a few metal barricades?

Maybe the readers of these right-wing sites don't see anything like this in their rural and outer-ring-suburban hometowns, but steel barricades are a fairly common feature of city life, especially here in New York. If you're up front along the parade route for the St. Patrick's Day parade or when a local sports team wins a championship, you're leaning (or climbing) on one.

Left-wing demonstrations are routinely hemmed in by steel barricades. Here are some preventing demonstrators from getting too close to the site of the 2004 Republican convention, which was held in New York. If any right-wingers thought those barricades were a sign of the death of the Republic, they sure didn't say so at the time.

And steel barricades are used here for ordinary traffic control:

So relax, righties. The barricades will come down, and there'll still be an America when that happens.

Meanwhile, the right's other favorite presidential candidate appears to make metal barricades a regular part of his campaign stops, as The New York Times recently reported:

Suzy Barker, a native Iowan dressed in an orange-and-blue University of Florida hoodie, waited in a crowd of fellow Republicans on Friday morning to meet Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.

... Mr. DeSantis — dressed in a dark blue suit with a light blue, open-collar shirt and black boots — stood on the opposite side of 10 metal bike racks separating him from the crowd.

And as the Daily Beast noted in a subsequent story:

The governor’s aversion to pressing the flesh, and his concern over the risk of unexpected interactions with the public, is already so well-known that early primary state players are working to DeSantis-proof their events in order to attract the flinty would-be candidate and his tight-knit team....

During his Iowa swing, DeSantis’ apparent use of bike racks to create space between himself and a crowd didn’t go unnoticed elsewhere. “If they want 50 bike racks, we’ll give them 50 bike racks,” a New Hampshire GOP lawmaker quipped to The Daily Beast.

If anyone on the right has a problem with this, I'm not aware of it.