Media outlets that defended this summer’s violent riots in major cities across America are now treating the riot at the U.S. Capitol building on Wednesday the way they should have treated all the riots.
To be clear: All of the riots this year were horrible and wrong. The one on Wednesday had the added distinction of taking place in and around the U.S. Capitol building.
The media, however, is reporting the violence on Wednesday completely differently than how they reported the violent riots that burned businesses and vehicles, attacked cops, and left cities in ruins.
One prime example comes from MSNBC’s Ali Velshi, who in late May stood in front of a burning building in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and declared the riots were “mostly a protest.” The Daily Wire’s Amanda Prestigiacomo reported at the time:
“I wanna be clear on how I characterize this,” said Velshi, reporting live from Minneapolis. “This is mostly a protest, it is not, it is not, generally speaking, unruly.”
“But fires have been started and this crowd is relishing that,” he told MSNBC anchor Brian Williams.
“There is a deep sense of grievance and complaint here, and that is the thing,” added Velshi. “That when you discount people who are doing things to public property that they shouldn’t be doing, it does have to be understood that this city has got, for the last several years, an issue with police, and it’s got a real sense of the deep sense of grievance of inequality.”
Velshi admitted, despite his downplaying of the violence, that he could see “four fires” from where he was reporting at the time. As Prestigiacomo reported, one of those fires engulfed a liquor store, another burned the Minnesota Police Department’s 3rd Precinct headquarters. On the night Velshi made his “peaceful” claims, the Saint Paul Police Department reported that more than 170 businesses had been damaged or looted and that “dozens of fires” had been set throughout the city.
Flash forward to Thursday morning, when Velshi tweeted something completely different about the riots taking place in downtown Washington, D.C.:
“TRUMP INCITES MOB” is the headline of this morning’s New York Times.
Any journalist who sugar coats their language or normalizes what has happened today isn’t doing their job.
Our job is to bear witness & tell the truth: Trump is attempting a coup, and inciting violence
Media outlets and Democrats spent the year promoting the violent riots in America’s cities, which were far from where they worked or lived. In September, a video went viral showing prominent Democrats such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), then-presidential candidate Joe Biden, and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) promoting the violence. Prestigiacomo reported at the time:
In June of 2018, Pelosi lamented, “I just don’t even know why there aren’t uprisings all over the country. And maybe there will be, when people realize that this is a policy that they defend.”
Another clip in the video compilation features “Squad” member Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) calling for “unrest in the streets.”
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Former VP and Democratic presidential nominee Biden is also featured in the video bragging that he’d like to physically assault a younger President Donald Trump.
“If we were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him,” Biden said of Trump back in 2018.