As we watch major cities head into another day of destruction from violent rioters, let’s take a moment to remember that this is exactly what Democrats and the national media have been warning about for three years.
Wait, that’s not right. Sorry — what I meant was, where’s all the Trump-inspired violence we were told to anticipate? What happened to that inevitable rise of white nationalism that’s supposedly been looming since Election Day 2016?
For days, weeks, and months on end, we had it drilled into our collective consciousness that a faint breeze was about to send us all plummeting into nationwide violence sparked by President Trump’s rhetoric and racism.
And yet, here we are today. If anything, it’s the opposite. At the very least, it’s safe to say that the people sending police stations up in flames, looting Macy’s for new shoes, and in the words of Democratic Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, “running out with brown liquor in your hands, breaking windows,” are not Trump supporters.
Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden said in Iowa last year that Trump “has fanned the flames of white supremacy in the nation.”
Since-forgotten presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke said that Trump made it “very clear” that he’s a white supremacist.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Trump “has given aid and comfort to white supremacists.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders said that “all evidence” indicates Trump is “trying to appeal to white nationalism.”
It never ends.
A reporter last year in the Washington Post said that in Greenville, North Carolina, Muslims and immigrants were shaken by newfound “fears” that they’re not welcome in their own neighborhoods and communities.
Samar Badwan, an American Muslim, “never had to question whether her hijab was incompatible with her Southern drawl,” the story said. “She never had to fear that her North Carolina neighbors might hold her Palestinian heritage against her.” And she “never had to think that in Greenville … her faith would mark her as an unwanted outsider.”
All of that, according to the reporter, was before “the president came to town.”
And yet, just a few months before the end of Trump’s term, the widespread violence is coming from people who most likely hate him. Who’s stoking it? The media.
CNN political analyst David Gergen said Tuesday that Trump’s referrals to himself as “the president of law and order” functioned as “race-baiting” and, in turn, “would deliberately incite violence.”
Liberal Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote Monday that the destruction we’re seeing right now “are the wages of Trump’s hate-filled incumbency.”
The always hysterical Don Lemon on CNN said late last week that Trump has “contributed” to the “environment” we’re now experiencing.
Until this past weekend, the only thing Trump had said about the death of George Floyd, which is what all of this is about, is that the videotape showing the white police officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck was troubling and that he was directing the Justice Department to expedite an investigation of the issue.
It wasn’t until the actual rioting and plundering in Minneapolis and Atlanta that Trump said that local authorities needed to bring order back to their streets.
So, in what way, again, is he responsible for riotous acts committed by people who hate him? It’s the media’s perpetual blame of Trump and his supporters for riots that has more to do with the unrest than anything he has ever said.
To date, the one case of mass violence that you could arguably attribute to white supremacy in the last three years was the Walmart shooting in El Paso, which left two dozen people dead. The shooter had published a manifesto confessing his fears over immigrants replacing whites, though he explicitly said his views predate Trump’s political career.
But in the past three days, government buildings have been set on fire, police have been attacked, at least nine people (according to the Associated Press) have been killed, countless more have been injured, and untold damage has been done to private and commercial property, all amid the nationwide protests.
The hotly anticipated “Trump-inspired violence” never came to be. Instead, we got this. And when the media aren’t agitating, they’re coming up with excuses for the mayhem — like, for example, blaming the president.
So much for all the media’s warnings about obscure “white nationalist” elements such as 4chan and the Proud Boys. How long will it take them to identify where the real violence is coming from? That never seems to get a name.
