Chelsea Manning, out of the spotlight after a failed run for the Senate last summer, decided to look for some attention again on Wednesday, which just so happened to be Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, by issuing the same annual message: “F*** the police.”
Manning added, “We live in a domestic military occupation in every major city.”
Manning issued the same tweet last year, albeit with a different picture:
Manning has made rancid comments about America or its institutions for some time; last October, after being released from prison, Manning visited the United Kingdom and whimpered that the United States itself was a prison, saying, “This whole notion that you get out of prison and you are free now turned out to be a bit of a downer in that sense. Because what happened, we really built this large, big prison, which is the United States, in the meantime – it was already happening, it just really intensified.” Manning added that the “surveillance systems, the cameras, or the police presence,” made America seem less free, arguing, “You think about the fact that we have walls around our country, and that is very much the same thing that is inside a prison. I see a lot of similarities between the world out here and the world that was in there.”
Manning served seven years of a 35-year sentence in prison after admitting leaking more than 700,000 military and State Department documents to WikiLeaks in 2010. Manning’s sentence was commuted by former President Barack Obama in 2017.
Last May, Manning told reporters, “The rise of authoritarianism is encroaching in every aspect of life, whether it’s government or corporate or technological.”
As The Daily Wire noted in August 2017, Manning issued a number of tweets in “solidarity” with Antifa, including one that referenced the police, saying, “the police/intel/military state defending fascism is the real “agitator” here dismantle the police state!”
Last June, police searched Manning’s Montgomery County apartment on a wellness check after Manning issued two tweets appearing to threaten suicide. Manning provided video footage to The Intercept of three officers entering the apartment with guns drawn after knocking. Manning, who was out of the country at the time, stated, “This is what a police state looks like. Guns drawn during a ‘wellness’ check.”
Capt. Paul Starks of the Montgomery County Police told The Intercept:
They responded to the address to check her welfare. Once inside the residence they realized that the residence did not match the photo that was posted on Twitter. … We tried to determine where she may be by attempting to use her phone but the phone was powered off and they weren’t able to leave a message … They don’t know what kind of circumstances they are entering when they enter a home. The fact that a weapon is drawn doesn’t mean that they are going to shoot it. Do you know what was going on in that apartment that night? No. Not until you open the door and go in. … We respond to hundreds of thousands of calls each year. Many of them are not what is phoned in.
The Daily Wire reported, “Metro Transit Police SWAT Commander William Malone explained further that people frequently use police to commit suicide, and in this case, the person they were checking on had military training: ‘The police should be commended for their actions in this case, not criticized.’”