Trump Felt Threatened by a Decades-Old Peace Vigil and Tore It Down
Hopefully the president will be able to sleep soundly now.

A peace vigil that’s over 40 years old has been dismantled on President Donald Trump’s orders.
The vigil, which stood in Lafayette Park near the White House, was composed of a blue tent surrounded by signs that read things like, “War is Not the Answer” and “Stop Genocide in Gaza.” Erected in 1981, it was widely regarded as the longest-running protest vigil in U.S. history, according to PBS, until the Trump administration removed it on Sunday.
The president was first made aware of the tent on Friday, when Brian Glenn, a reporter from Real America’s Voice, brought it to his attention.
While the tent had originally been constructed to promote nuclear disarmament, Glenn claimed that it had “kind of morphed into a kind of anti-America, sometimes anti-Trump” tent.
And of course, the president couldn’t stand for that.
“Take it down. Take it down, today. Right now,” he said. “Nobody told me that.”
The move is part of Trump’s ongoing efforts to clear homeless encampments around the city. But Philipos Melaku-Bello, a volunteer who has staffed the vigil for years, said that this outpost fell outside those bounds.
“The difference between an encampment and a vigil is that an encampment is where homeless people live,” Melaku-Bello told the AP. “As you can see, I don’t have a bed. I have signs and it is covered by the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, and freedom of expression.”
Glenn, the reporter, claimed that he’d heard reports that there were rats at the vigil, that people were sleeping and eating in the tent, and that it could be a “national security risk” because people could hide weapons inside.
According to Melaku-Bello, no weapons were found in the tent, and neither were any rats. “Not a single rat came out as they took down the cinder blocks,” he said.
Hopefully now the president can sleep soundly, knowing that there’s one less peace vigil out there.