Osama bin Laden vs The Sandwich Artist
While multiple people have made this comparison, the first I saw do so was Ken White, whom you should be following if you have Bluesky.
In 2011, after months of CIA surveillance, a team of Navy Seals raided a home on the outskirts of Abbottabad, Pakistan. Not including the helicopter pilots or interpreter, 23 Seals landed in the compound, killed their target, collected intelligence, and evacuated in under an hour. The operation was a wild success.
That team of 23 men killed Osama bin Laden, the terrorist mastermind and leader of Al-Qaeda.
In 2025, a similarly sized team of 20 men from federal law enforcement agencies valiantly conducted a similar raid. Like Operation Neptune Spear described above, this group breached a building to conduct the arrest of another notorious criminal. This raid was filmed and posted to The White House social media accounts. They are quite proud of this successful apprehension. Though they were perhaps in less danger than the Navy Seals who captured bin Laden given the relative severity of the crimes committed…
Sean Charles Dunn was arrested by 20 federal agents because he threw a sandwich at one of the men who have turned DC into another one of Trump’s police states
To be fair, it looks to me from video of this violent attack that this was a partially eaten foot-long and not merely a far less dangerous 6 inch.
The sandwich mostly broke apart and bounced off of the armor-clad officer, because IT WAS A SANDWICH.
Dunn, a Department of Justice attorney until this incident, was released after arrest. He was unlikely to face serious consequences given that the only crime here was THROWING A SANDWICH.
But Dunn had actually committed the most serious crime of all - standing up to Trump’s authoritarianism. So rather than let this remain a matter for local law enforcement, Dunn was charged with FELONY assault at the federal level. His lawyer tried to arrange his surrender to initiate court proceedings, but the raid took place before that could happen.
Aside from the White House itself publishing video of the raid to arrest The Sandwich Artist, multiple members of the Trump administration weighed in. Attorney General Pam Bondi said that if you touch anyone in federal law enforcement, they will come after you. She added that Dunn was part of the “deep state” they are fighting and that those who disrespect our government and law enforcement have no place in this administration. (Put a pin in that)
DC attorney and wine aficionado Jeanine Pirro said, “We’re going to back the police to the hilt.”
Echoing their recent actions in Los Angeles, the federal government has swarmed the streets of DC, harassing citizens, and arresting minorities. We have already seen numerous examples of violence from these agents. That is of course the goal of these operations. Donald Trump has always admired dictators and authoritarians. And like in his first term, his favorite activity hobby shared with those despots is sending armed men to terrorize civilians.
This surge of agents is on its face meant to combat out of control crime in DC. We covered this last time, but DC crime is lower than it has been in decades. That’s according to the Department of Justice itself.
I think comparison is such an excellent tool to understand just how despotic the Trump administration and Republican Party have become.
We sent roughly the same number of men to kill the most notorious terrorist in history as Sean, a veteran and lawyer who tossed his dinner at someone.
“Ah, but they’re just protecting police!” your Trump supporting acquaintances may say.
They’re SO concerned with protecting police that Trump pardoned nearly every single person who assaulted the police protecting the Capitol on January 6th, 2021.
The video of Officer Daniel Hodges getting crushed in a tunnel by a mob of Trump supporters who were ripping off his gear and whipping his head around by grabbing his face mask is striking, but Hodges is just one of ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY police officers assaulted by Trump’s mob on 1/6.
Most of the men assaulting the police that day have been pardoned by Donald Trump, with the full support of Pam Bondi and Jeanine Pirro.
So no, they aren’t concerned at all about protecting the police. When they say they are, they are lying. Each and every single time they mention their support of law enforcement, the pardons of the 1/6 attackers should be immediately brought up.
They were fine with people beating the tar out of police when those violent insurrectionists supported them. Their claims of supporting police are bullshit. What they support is police violence against civilians, but only SOME civilians.
Let’s take a look at another easy-to-make comparison.
Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday. Before, during, and after the meeting, which accomplished nothing at all, Trump continued his decades-long habit of praising Putin. Vladimir Putin is a murderous dictator. The war in Ukraine is not some nuanced conundrum. It’s nothing other than a war of territorial expansion. We literally rolled out a red carpet for Putin’s first visit to US soil in years. (Most neutral countries could not host this event as Putin is a wanted war criminal who would face arrest in 124 countries.) Trump APPLAUDED when Putin arrived. One of the world’s worst dictators arrived in the United States to discuss a war he started only to be met with applause and fawning praise by the US president.
If that’s how Trump responds to the visit of a dictator, how about to the visit of a potential ally and Democratic leader, fighting for his nation’s survival against an invader who is literally kidnapping children in Ukraine and sending them to the opposite end of the continent of Asia?
They attacked and tried to humiliate him. Vance and Trump took turns berating Volodymyr Zelenskyy who was there desperately seeking the aid of the United States with the very existence of his country at stake. Vance’s primary concern was that Zelenskyy was not grateful enough, telling him he never said thank you, despite that being the FIRST THING Zelenskyy said during the meeting.
This goes beyond hypocrisy. Pointing out the contradictions is not going to shame Republicans - they are not capable of feeling it.
But it’s still important to point out the gulf between our current reality and what is morally right.
An HSI officer in DC asked a journalist to not film them out of concern for the privacy of those they were harassing/arresting. Bullshit. That sounds like a reasonable request if you are unaware that the White House itself is posting pictures of those arrested along with their alleged crimes. They are not concerned with privacy. They merely do not want you to see what they are doing.
They don’t actually think a sandwich throwing lawyer is as dangerous as Osama bin Laden. They just want to make sure dissenters are afraid of them.
JD Vance was not actually bothered by Zelenskyy not saying “thank you,” (which again, he did). It’s just that Vance and Trump prefer dictatorships to democracies.
And they do not give a rat’s ass about protecting police. They just want you to stop resisting the brutalization of protestors, minorities, and anyone else who draws the ire of the men they have sent to terrorize our cities.
Far too many elected Democrats and journalists let them get away with these lies. I implore you to not be one of them. If you see spurious arguments being made about supporting police, go ahead and bring up 1/6. That crazy relative at Thanksgiving talks about crime rates? Point out Trump is a convicted felon.
Do not surrender in the war on truth.
As this update was dark, please keep in mind humor is a fantastic weapon against the powerful. I give you two of the best memes I’ve seen related to our hero, The Sandwich artist.
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