It's Brian Lehrer and this is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios.

It's Thursday, June 4th.

Today is the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in China. It was on this date,

June 4th in 1989. Let's hope that President Trump doesn't decide to make Lafayette Square,

across from the White House, his Tiananmen Square. The way he's been going, he would do it if he thought

it would help him get re reelected, or so it

seems. At least we can say that polls that are coming out indicate the opposite is true. It would

not help him. Trump is sinking in some key swing states. Even Texas is a statistical tie now

between him and Biden in a new poll as he continues to manage

both the pandemic and the uprising in his way. Former President George W. Bush, did you hear

this, wrote in a statement Tuesday that he and his wife, Laura, were, quote, disturbed by the

injustice and fear that suffocate our country, unquote,

and that they should be viewed, quote, through the eyes of the threatened, oppressed, and disenfranchised.

George W. Bush wrote that.

And in what looks like a rebuke of Trump, without using his name, Bush also wrote,

there is a better way, the way of empathy and shared commitment and bold action and a piece

rooted in justice.

George W. Bush.

And there has rarely been a more remarkable break with the president

in United States history than the one yesterday by Trump's original defense secretary, James

Mattis. Let's turn back the clock to December 2016, shortly after Trump's election, when he was

all pumped up at a rally about the guy

...