On Thursday's MSNBC Live, near the end of her show, host Katy Tur delivered a commentary touting the liberal spin on the issue of police shootings and race as she complained about White House unwillingness to intervene in the Stephon Clark shooting case. But, even though her colleague Chris Jansing actually acknowledged the day before that twice as many whites as blacks have so far been killed by police this year, Tur only cited black shooting victims as if it were almost exclusively blacks who are killed.
And, an hour before Tur's commentary, MSNBC's Al Sharpton had wrongly claimed that it is "always unarmed black men" who are shot by police.
After beginning her commentary by recalling that Clark was killed by police "in a hail of bullets," she continued:
The outrage has been growing for 11 days with protesters marching in the streets and storming city hall in Sacramento. They want to know why this keeps happening. Why do unarmed black men keep getting killed by cops? Why do black men not get the same benefit of the doubt as white men when interacting with police officers? This problem is not new, and it does not seem to be going away.
The MSNBC host then added: "But, according to the White House, Clark's death isn't there problem. It's Sacramento's."
After a clip of White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders stating that the President Donald Trump so far is treating it as a "local matter" and is not planning to intervene, Tur seemed taken aback as she responded: "A local matter? Really?"
Then played a clip of her colleague, NBC White House correspondent Kristen Welker questioning Sanders on the issue. Welker: "African-American mothers all across the country feel as though their sons are dying, so does the President think he needs to do something about that?"
Then, Tur contradicted her complaint about "unarmed black men" being shot by the police as she included Alton Sterling, who was believed to be reaching for his gun as he was resisting arrest. And even in the more sympathetic case of Philando Castille, it would be inaccurate to describe him as "unarmed." here's more from Tur:
Again, this isn't just happening in Sacramento. It happened to Philando Castille in St. Paul, Minnesota. It happened to Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It happened to Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. It outlasted President Obama, and it is not going away under President Trump, who blasted the complaints of excessive force in law enforcement, touted a platform of Blue Lives Matter, and used Black Lives Matter as a wedge to divide voters in 2016.
Approving of left-wing anti-police activism, the MSNBC host concluded:
Today, rightfully so, black mothers, black fathers, and black sons and black daughters are asking if this President cares. They're asking why it is not a national issue. They should be heard. Does this President really want to fix things? Does he want to make lives better -- great again? Or were folks right when they called these callous, crude, and ultimately empty words?
The commentary ended with clips from Trump's "What the hell do you have to lose?" speech from the 2016 presidential campaign.
A few hours earlier, as Sharpton appeared as a guest on MSNBC Live at about 1:30 p.m. Eastern to discuss the Stephon Clark case, he claimed that it is "always unarmed black men" who are killed.
But, as Jansing substitute-hosted Wednesday's Velshi and Ruhle, she informed viewers that, so far this year, the number of whites killed by police outnumber blacks by a 2-1 margin. She then tried to spin the numbers as still suggesting blacks are discriminated against because the percentage of shooting victims who are black is higher than the percentage of the overall population who are black.
Not mentioned are FBI crime statistics which suggest these numbers can be explained by a disproportionately higher crime rate by the black population which would logically lead to a corresponding increase in interactions with police.
According to FBI statistics for 2016, when homicide offenders could be identified, 53.5 percent were black while 43.9 percent were white.
