After weeks of violence across American cities, MSNBC host Al Sharpton, in step with the rest of the leftist media, continued to ignore the intense violence that has grown across America. On Saturday night’s PoliticsNation, Sharpton and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan lied on national television about the threat of violence by the radical left, while taking swipes at President Trump’s federal response.
According to Sharpton, America has not seen any violence, instead it has just been citizens exercising their First Amendment rights:
Madam Mayor, it seems contradictory that the President told the local authorities and state authorities to handle the coronavirus, but he wants to come in your local city and handle what he deems as out-of-control protesters, though we've not seen that and seems to have taken the exact opposite view when it comes to people that have exercised their free speech…We’ve not seen violence here. We’ve seen for the most part all of the George Floyd protests nationwide for weeks now peaceful.
Sharpton could not have been more wrong about his Saturday night claim, especially considering that he was talking to the Mayor of the city of the infamous CHAZ/CHOP. Mayor Durkan’s city dealt with mass violence at their protests, which resulted in a variety of shootings, and a few deaths. Sharpton ignored the death of a nineteen-year-old African-American in Seattle’s extremist “autonomous zone,” because it did not fit his false narrative of the protests being peaceful.
Sharpton has completely disregarded the fact that even civil rights leaders are coming out against the violence taking place in the streets. Unfortunately, he doesn’t care; he doesn’t care that these riots are hurting more black lives than helping them. Sharpton and the rest of MSNBC will do anything to smear the President.
The radical host even brought up Portland, where federal officers were sent to protect a federal courthouse:
Your fellow mayor in Portland was teargassed the other night at one of those demonstrations. Even though the demonstrators don’t necessarily agree with the mayor, he came out and was teargassed as he stood with them. This is—would be considered outrageous if it was anywhere else in the world by the American public it would be considered outrageous.
The outrageous factor is that the Mayor of Portland was greeted by violent protestors, who threw things at him and screamed in his face, and that he let his city get to that point and stood there watching these rioters destroy property across the city.
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Read the full transcript below:
MSNBC’s PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton
07/25/2020
5:02 PM ET
AL SHARPTON: Of course, the nation's cities also continue to grapple with another threat worsened by this White House. As domestic cases of coronavirus topped 4 million this week with deaths nearing 200,000. The contrast is stark as ever between the administration's response to the virus where federal action has been undermined by Trump himself, and the national response largely left to the states. And the President's war on cities where mayors call for local control are being shouted down in the name of law and order.
Joining me now, the Mayor of Seattle Jenny Durkan, who has warned the President to stay out of her city. Madam Mayor, it seems contradictory that the President told the local authorities and state authorities to handle the coronavirus, but he wants to come in your local city and handle what he deems as out of control protesters, though we've not seen that and seems to have taken the exact opposite view when it comes to people that have exercised their free speech.
MAYOR JENNY DURKAN (D-SEATTLE): Reverend Sharpton, you're exactly right, and I think this is a dangerous political trend for a president who is growing more desperate. America needed his help. We still need his help with the coronavirus, but at every juncture, he makes decisions to make it worse and to not give us what we need to fight this virus. At the same time when people protest in the streets, he is militarizing federal law enforcement and literally invading cities. That is not what we need in America. We're seeing the shredding of our democracy in front of our eyes.
SHARPTON: Now you’ve threatened to go to court. What would be the basis of your court challenge?
DURKAN: We have, and I spoke with the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security, who had assured me that they were not going to surge agents into Seattle, and that he would call my chief of police and myself if that changed. Right after that we learned they had placed more agents here. They promised us they will keep them on federal property, but we've seen what has happened in Portland. That is escalated things, so we are prepared if necessary with the City of Seattle and state law enforcement and the state government and the Attorney General, if we need to, we will go to court to make sure that they cannot usurp our powers of our police.
SHARPTON: We've seen people go through the streets of Charlottesville, for example, screaming "Jews will not replace us" and fighting those anti-confederate statue protesters and the president called them good people on both sides. What is the difference here? We've not seen violence here. We've seen for the most part all of the George Floyd protest nationwide for weeks now peaceful. So how do you call one group of people and equate them as good people with nonviolent protesters, even when he said that statement we had seen one man run a car in and kill a young lady, that was an anti-confederate stature protestor. Are we looking at just raw bigotry here or raw politics or a combination of both?
DURKAN: I think we are seeing a president who's decided he wants to politicize these protests. He can’t give in to demands. He won't admit the systemic racism of America. Instead he wants to create division, he wants to create a law-and-order platform. And if you’ve seen what he's done, he has escalated the violence in Portland. Portland protests had almost got to the point where they were less and starting to work on solutions. The same in Seattle.
But the actions of this president has escalated violence. And that’s what we fear here. We want to move forward to make the changes we need to make, not just in policing, but in all our systems of government, and to invest into black communities and communities of color. But the President has a different agenda in mind and I think it's very dangerous. You know, the Department of Homeland Security was formed after 9/11 in order to protect Americans and this president is using it to fight Americans. I think that should frighten everyone.
SHARPTON: Using it to fight Americans. I think that's well put. And to use them to fight Americans that are standing up for American principles, saying that we want to see equal rights, we want to see equal distribution of services. And that is something that America has always claimed, if it is not lived up to it, but claimed to stand for. Why would the Department of Homeland Security be trying to come in and stop that on anyway in the field of that, or incite that into an explosive situation, as we saw in Portland?
Your fellow mayor in Portland was teargassed the other night at one of those demonstrations. Even though the demonstrators don’t necessarily agree with the mayor, he came out and was teargassed as he stood with them. This is, would be considered outrageous if it was anywhere else in the world by the American public it would be considered outrageous.
DURKAN: You're so right. I was the former United States Attorney under President Obama. So I was the chief federal law enforcement officer. And what we're seeing today is absolutely unprecedented for federal law enforcement. The full combat fatigues night after night using tear gas, arresting people, spiriting them into unmarked vans, that is not the work of a law enforcement that's trying to keep the public safe. It's the work trying to intimidate the public. And, as the President said before, dominate the streets. That's un-American. We need to move beyond that. We do not want to see that in Seattle. We're hoping very much that it doesn't.
I've asked everybody this weekend to please protest peacefully so that we don't give them the excuse to act like they had in Portland, and that we can move beyond this period of time. Protests are critical to our country. The top of your hour seeing John Lewis lie in state should remind us all that we have so far to go. He will cross that bridge for the last time, but we as a country have yet to begin to cross that bridge. That's where we should be focused. How do we make our country better, not how do we sow division.
SHARPTON: And you're correct. The weekend that we start a series of remembering John Lewis, it reminds us of how far we are yet to go as he goes over that bridge tomorrow for the last time, a bridge still named after a Klansman.
