Americans in the heartland only believe this summer’s Black Lives Matter protests turned 2020 into a uniquely violent year, because they “live in a Fox News/Newsmax/OAN bubble,” where stations played the same “violent outbreaks on a loop,” according to MSNBC and The New York Times.
MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” showed footage of a focus group of Trump voters that pollster Frank Luntz conducted for the newspaper. Their dissent from the legacy media’s party line triggered the show’s host and guests to insist that Red State voters had been victims of disinformation.
New York Times deputy opinion editor Patrick Healy said that Republican voters were “trading in false claims about the election being stolen or Black Lives Matter being a Marxist hate group — neither of which is true.” (In fact, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors, who calls herself as a “trained Marxist,” released a video last December in which she admitted, “I do believe in Marxism.”)
Healy said that “a lot of these Trump voters live in a Fox News/Newsmax/OAN [One America News] bubble,” watching networks that played a handful of violent incidents that broke out at the “mostly peaceful protests” to mislead their viewers.
“The reality is Fox News, others were playing this over and over and over again. They weren’t showing the largely peaceful protests. They were showing the scattered acts of violence,” Healy said. “What a lot of these voters were digesting is what they were seeing on television, replayed night after night after night.”
Joe Scarborough agreed that “if you’re watching a channel that does nothing but show these violent outbreaks on a loop, instead of showing how 90% of the protests go, you are obviously going to think that there was nothing but violence last summer during the protests.”
Healy singled out a participant in Luntz’s forum named Evelyn, who said protesters had been violent.
“From her point of view, last summer was a very, very violent time in America,” Healy said. “That was one of the moments in the focus groups when she [Evelyn] was living in a completely different reality than I was living in.”
In reality, violence broke out in the vast majority of cities that hosted BLM protests, and the “mostly peaceful demonstrations” caused billions of dollars in damage and killed at least 25 people; and crime spiked during 2020, especially over last summer.
“2020 Ends as One of America’s Most Violent Years in Decades,” reported Time magazine last December.
The nation became more violent due in part to the less-than-peaceful aspect of BLM “protests.”
Nearly three out of every four (72%) major law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and Canada reported that rioters injured police officers during their cities’ BLM protests. Police chiefs declared that 574 of the “protests” turned into outright riots, according to the Major Cities Chiefs Association — but this is an undercount, as political leaders often ordered police to stand down, even when it meant letting arsonists burn the police station. Rioters damaged 303 police cruisers in New York City last summer.
Demonstrators in Kenosha, Wisconsin, caused more than $2 million to city property alone, as CNN called their actions “fiery but mostly peaceful protests.”
The cost to insurance companies from the rioting reached an estimated $1 billion to $2 billion last September, according to Property Claim Services, making them the most expensive in U.S. history. But more riots have taken place since September — and insurance only pays for a portion of the overall damage.
The longest sustained violence has taken place in Portland, Oregon, where 62% of “protests” reportedly erupted into open violence.
The Associated Press reported last September that Portland faces “an uncertain future as it reaches a stunning benchmark: 100 consecutive nights of racial injustice protests marred by vandalism, chaos — and the killing of a supporter of President Donald Trump.”
The Oregonian noted in February that “many of those demonstrators who gathered for early evening speeches” at Black Lives Matter protests “would eventually end up at the Justice Center, joining a smaller contingent of protesters already there. By 11 p.m. almost every night, pockets of violence broke out as individuals tossed rocks, bottles and other debris at police officers.”
Last month, The New York Times followed up coverage with the headline, “After Nearly a Year of Unrest, Portland Leaders Pursue a Crackdown.” (The city’s riots have continued.)
Meanwhile, the nation became a more violent place, as jails released more than 100,000 prisoners and illegal immigrants in detention nationwide — including murderers — some of whom immediately reoffended.
Murder rates saw double-digit increases in 36 of the nation’s 50 largest cities last year. In a story that didn’t mention the word “protests” or “riots,” NPR reported:
At the end of 2020, Chicago police reported more than 750 murders, a jump of more than 50% compared with 2019. By mid-December, Los Angeles saw a 30% increase over the previous year with 322 homicides. There were 437 homicides in New York City by Dec. 20, nearly 40% more than the previous year.
Madison, Wisconsin, saw its murder rate increase 400% in 2020, as murders doubled in four other cities.
Final national murder update of 2020:
Murder up 36.7% in 57 agencies with data through at least September (though most have data through November). Murder up in 51 of 57, 37 of 58 agencies reporting murder up more than 30%.
Spreadsheet here: https://t.co/vEhKHuFNrY pic.twitter.com/5HgVmwGmDS
— Jeff Asher (@Crimealytics) December 29, 2020
Crime rates also skyrocketed in cities that gave in to protesters’ demands to “defund the police,” such as Minneapolis, where gun crimes doubled and carjackings more than tripled over 2019 levels.
No one who denies these facts — too few of which were reported by his own newspaper — has any business lecturing other people about living in an alternate reality.
Trump supporters “should be heard,” said Frank Luntz, who acknowledged “my politics have changed.”
“We need to know what they have to say. We need to know what they think, even if we violently, emotionally, morally disagree” with them.
“I think your viewers need to hear that stuff,” he said.
So do MSNBC’s contributors.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.