It’s Donald Trump’s first summer back in the White House since 2020 and — just like five years ago — leftists protesters are raging in America’s cities and the liberal media are blaming... Trump. Earlier this month, ABC’s Mary Bruce scorned the President’s decision to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles as “a remarkable and unprecedented escalation” and evidence of his “eagerness to used armed forces to try and shut down protests.”
In another echo of 2020, there has been little bad press for the actual rioters; CNN and MSNBC described them as “peaceful,” “mostly peaceful” or “largely peaceful” a whopping 211 times just on June 6 and 7 — even as the mob burned cars, looted stores and hurled rocks and other dangerous objects at law enforcement.
It’s as if lazy reporters merely dusted off their scripts from five years ago. Back then, the ostensible reason for the protests was the murder in late May of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, but the demonstrations quickly became a violent vehicle for broader left-wing rage against Trump administration policies and the President himself.
So instead of criticizing the lawlessness in the streets, journalists elevated their cause. On May 30, 2020, for example, CNN’s Don Lemon likened looting vandals to “the Boston Tea Party,” as he complained about the President’s rhetoric: “Do not get it twisted and think this is something that has never happened before, and this is so terrible and these savages, and all of that. This is how this country was started.”
“Heavy-handedness seems to be kind of the order of the day. I didn’t see any law enforcement really working to protect the protesters in exercising their constitutional First Amendment right to protest. That is also part of the responsibility of law enforcement, to uphold the Constitution,” MSNBC’s Joshua Johnson whined on NBC’s Meet the Press on May 31. “The idea that you could have a few people, who break a few windows and burn a few cars, and then militarize the whole nation’s law enforcement infrastructure, it just shows how very tenuous things are right now.”
“The President has incited and divided, has stoked this. His comments have been as outrageous as they are unacceptable,” MSNBC analyst Steve Schmidt fumed that night in a special “A Country on the Brink” program.
“The President seems to think that dominating black people, dominating peaceful protesters is law and order. It’s not. He calls them thugs. Who is the thug here?” CNN’s Anderson Cooper railed on June 1. “I’ve seen countries ripped apart by hate and misinformation and lies and political demagogues and racism. We can’t let that happen here.”
“We already know where the President’s heart is and his heart is in continued racial division rather than unity,” correspondent John Harwood alleged on CNN’s Newsroom ten days later. “The President’s impulse, as it’s been throughout his political career is to play to racial division as a source of political strength.”
Yet journalists insisted on painting protests as benign and peaceful. On June 12, CBS’s Anna Werner cheerfully reported from Seattle about a section of the city from which radical demonstrators had forced law enforcement to retreat: “The autonomous zone has turned into an almost street fair-like atmosphere with free food, art displays, and outdoor movie nights.”
Three days later, correspondent Vaughn Hillyard painted a similarly delightful picture of the occupied zone in Seattle, telling MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle: “You had a very peaceful week here on these streets....I think it’s important to note, Stephanie, this is not some hostile takeover.”
Ruhle beamed: “That message of peace and community. Vaughn, thank you so much. It’s so important to have you there showing us the real story.”
Yet with the police forced out, the area was plagued by “rapes, robberies, and all sorts of violent acts,” according to Seattle’s police chief. Shootings left one dead and others injured; too late, the city’s Democratic mayor finally ordered police to move in and re-establish law and order.
But the national media continued to sanctify the protests and villainize Trump. “Thank goodness these protesters are starting to stand up and challenge Trumpism, which has an aura around it of white supremacy,” historian Douglas Brinkley charged June 13 on CNN.
“I think that many of us have echoed for a long period of time that Donald Trump was going to be on the wrong side of history. And he appears to do so. I mean, you can choose the side of Bull Connor, Lester Maddox and George Wallace if you want to,” CNN analyst Bakari Sellers echoed on June 23, lumping the President in with notorious Democratic racists of the civil rights era.
“Although amplifying racism and stoking culture wars have been mainstays of Trump’s public identity for decades, they have been particularly pronounced this summer,” the Washington Post’s Robert Costa and Philip Rucker echoed in a July 4 front-page story.
On July 10, disgraced ex-NBC anchor Brian Williams piled on. “What demographic is the President chasing here? Are we suddenly producing, by percentage, more people who feel the wrong team won in the Civil War?” Williams asked on his MSNBC show, The 11th Hour.
“The Republican Party is sort of morphing into the National Party in South Africa in the 1980s,” proclaimed MSNBC’s Joy Reid the next morning on AM Joy. “It’s, ‘We’ll defend white America’s privileges, but you have to be really afraid that the black people are coming for you, so you have to stick with us and stay with the team.’ It’s a strategy.”
On July 16, MSNBC’s Tiffany Cross, popped up on The View to scold Trump’s rhetoric: “He’s tossing red meat to his Klan-like base that he needs so desperately to win in November.”
Four days later, MSNBC’s Steve Schmidt was back on TV to unleash another anti-Trump tirade: “The President of the United States is a constitutional vandal and a political arsonist....He has loosed violence in America’s cities at an epic level. What we’re seeing is illiberal, it is illegal, and it is dangerous…. It’s federal thuggery — and it’s frightening.”
MSNBC’s Reid opted to bash the troops: “A generation ago, when federal forces were deployed into American cities, it was a relief to people of color because it meant that a little girl may get walked into school....Now, when federal forces are being deployed into America’s cities, it’s to tear gas and abuse people and in some cases just snatch people off the streets without identifying themselves and essentially to kidnap them. It’s a secret police sort of, you know, vibe instead of a cavalry.”
After federal agents finally detained violent Antifa protesters causing mayhem in Portland Oregan, the co-hosts of ABC’s The View painted the image of America as a police state. “I’m witnessing fascism in America now,” Joy Behar whined. “This is the beginning of the end of democracy.”
“This is not America, this is not American,” Sunny Hostin agreed. “We have really the actions of a dictator.”
Behar used the moment to electioneer against Trump: “You know what this reminds me of? Back in the day when the militia — or whatever they were — killed that kid….those children at Kent State, when our government is actually killing American citizens, children, they were college kids, it’s the same. We were horrified then, we’re horrified now. [Richard] Nixon had to go, and this President has to go, otherwise we have no country.”
For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.
