Last June, Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser demanded that National Guard forces be removed from the capital because the protests over George Floyd were “peaceful.” But now, Mayor Bowser is requesting National Guard forces during the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory because "people who are coming here to look for confrontations."
On Sunday, she told Jonathan Capehart on MSNBC her message to local residents is stay out of the downtown and “let the police department do its work, let's not mix with people who came here for violence and destruction.”
CNN.com is on board with Bowser’s differing standards on protest. They decentralized Bowser in their Monday afternoon story, making it about Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller approving her request for Guard troops. They also related that Bowser said that election-fraud protests in November and December "resulted in a large influx of participants, violence and criminal activity."
Back in June at CNN.com, Veronica Stracqualursi put Bowser front and center in their story, as she touted the putative peacefulness of leftist protesters:
Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser requested Friday that President Donald Trump remove all additional federal law enforcement and military presence from the city, arguing that the units are "inflaming" and "adding to the grievances" of people protesting over the death of George Floyd.
"The protestors have been peaceful, and last night, the Metropolitan Police Department did not make a single arrest. Therefore, I am requesting that you withdraw all extraordinary law enforcement and military presence from Washington, DC," Bowser wrote in a letter to the President...
That elides how DC police made hundreds of arrests for curfew violations, burglary and rioting in the days before, which CNN.com also avoided mentioning. (Actually, there was more than one pro-Bowser story at CNN.com eliding the rioting and making the whole controversy about unwelcome troops.)
It's fascinating that the Brian Stelter crowd at CNN accuse conservative media of only reporting "propaganda," but their willing stenography of Bowser, eliding all the same issues that she is eliding, looks a lot like party-line Democrat public relations.
Now Bowser vows “People are allowed to come into our city to participate in First Amendment activities...We will not allow people to incite violence, intimidate our residents, or cause destruction in our city.” But last summer, she acted like many Democrats, papering over violence and destruction, as if it distracted from the "mostly peaceful protests."
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) January 4, 2021
