Yesterday, President Trump hosted Turkish strongman Tayyip Erdogan. Ordinarily, this would have been the NeverTrumper outrage du jour but political DC was consumed with labeling National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster a liar and speculating on Trump’s impending impeachment based on an as yet unseen memo from James Comey.

The presence of Erdogan attracted demonstrators and the Turks, being Turks, decided that free speech was no more permissible in Washington, DC, than in Istanbul.

Supporters of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, including his government security forces, violently charged a group of protesters outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence here on Tuesday night in what the Metropolitan Police chief characterized as “a brutal attack.”

Eleven people were injured, including a police officer, and nine were taken to a hospital, the police chief, Peter Newsham, said at a news conference on Wednesday.

The State Department condemned the attack as an assault on free speech and warned Turkey that the action would not be tolerated. “We are communicating our concern to the Turkish government in the strongest possible terms,” Heather Nauert, a State Department spokeswoman, said in a statement on Wednesday.

Photos and videos posted on social media showed a chaotic scene of people kicking and punching as the police tried to intervene. At one point, a man threw a bullhorn, two men could be seen bleeding from the head, and another man was on the ground being violently kicked.

There was some activity by DC police but mostly they seem to have stayed out of the way. Why was that?

DC police chief said police involvement was "dicey" at Turkish/Kurd protest because many of the men beating the protestors were armed

— Perry Stein (@PerryStein) May 17, 2017

Funny how that works, isn’t it?