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“One person was shot and killed late Saturday in Portland, Oregon, as a large caravan of President Donald Trump supporters and Black Lives Matter protesters clashed in the streets, police said… the man was wearing a hat bearing the insignia of Patriot Prayer, a right-wing group whose members have frequently clashed with protesters in Portland in the past.” AP News
On Monday “[Joe] Biden, in his most direct attacks yet, accused [President Donald] Trump of causing the divisions that have ignited the violence. He delivered an uncharacteristically blistering speech and distanced himself from radical forces involved in altercations.” AP News
The right argues that Democrats are exacerbating the riots.
“Biden spent more time condemning the presence of federal officers in Portland than he did condemning the behavior of the mobs that forced the federal government to take action in the first place. He said nothing against the so-called CHAZ when Seattle protesters took the six-block zone for their own and forcefully removed law enforcement from the area. Nor did he comment on the looting that forced Chicago to close down its connecting bridges… Now, Biden is demanding an end to the violence, as is Harris. This would be a welcome change if it weren’t four months too late…
“It was Trump who offered federal assistance to Seattle, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Kenosha when it became clear that law enforcement needed help. And it was the Democrats who lead these cities that rejected his aid. Biden could have encouraged these cities’ Democratic officials to work with the Trump administration to put down the unrest, but he didn’t. Because he, like most other Democrats, believed that as long as he could downplay the violence, voters wouldn’t pay much attention to it.”
Kaylee McGhee, Washington Examiner
“It wasn’t anything Trump said or did that set off the initial nation-wide unrest a few months ago. It was a spontaneous reaction to the death of George Floyd, which Trump repeatedly condemned. The dynamic has been the same, only on a larger scale, as Ferguson, Mo., while Barack Obama was president — anger at a police action, followed by rioting treated with kid gloves by the media… The violence has overwhelmingly wracked cities governed by Democratic mayors and city councils for decades. They run the police departments, the schools and the housing authorities. If the cops are violent and corrupt, it’s on them. If they are such miserable places to live that they are powder kegs, it’s on them. If they can’t maintain basic order, it’s on them.”
Rich Lowry, New York Post
Voters see “A CNN chyron from a burning Kenosha: ‘Fiery but mostly peaceful protests after police shooting.’ A video of an outdoor diner at a Washington, D.C., restaurant being yelled at by Black Lives Matter protesters because she won’t raise a fist in solidarity. Republican Senator Rand Paul and his wife getting harassed by a swarm of protesters as they left the White House. And more: Trump being mocked in 2017 for warning that if statues of Robert E. Lee come down, then George Washington and Thomas Jefferson statues will be next — and then radical demonstrators doing exactly that three years later…
“Can the left be trusted with power? Let me ask that question more specifically. Can the left be honest that the tragedies unfolding today in American cities are as much the story of insufficient policing as they are of abusive policing? Does it get that ‘law and order’ is a precondition to civil liberty, not an impediment to it? Is it willing to say that the American founders who bequeathed us the institutions of liberal democracy should be honored, not despised? And does Joe Biden have the nerve to stand up to the extremes in his own party, or does he just mean to appease them?”
Bret Stephens, New York Times
“It’s impossible to miss the congruence between the rioters’ image of America—systemically racist, economically unequal, sustained by police brutality—and today’s Democratic Party orthodoxy… The problem for Mr. Biden isn’t so much the rioters themselves. Those looting shops along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, shooting people in Portland, Ore., or setting cars on fire in Kenosha aren’t Biden voters. The likelihood is they’re not voters at all, regarding America’s political system as rotten to the core…
“[The] refusal of Democratic politicians (including district attorneys) to hold lawbreakers accountable is what’s really hurting Mr. Biden’s case. Within the Democratic Party, even the most tepid criticism soon becomes an abject apology. Last Thursday, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut tweeted that ‘looting and property damage is bad’—only to delete the tweet after less than an hour because of left-wing blowback accusing him of drawing ‘an equivalency between property crime and murder,’ as he put it.”
William McGurn, Wall Street Journal
“Net approval for the Black Lives Matter movement peaked back on June 3 and has fallen sharply since. This was just over a week after George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, when riots had begun to sweep major cities. Among whites, net approval is already negative and headed downward…
“And while Democrats and Republicans are as polarized on the issue as one would expect, white Independents have shown a dramatic falloff in BLM support, going from a net 24% in early June to net 3% now, which is lower than before Floyd was killed. Of course BLM is not synonymous with rioting, but this trend may show the extent to which the issues have been conflated in the public mind…
“[Biden’s] real problem is a white electorate that was less engaged with the civil rights cause to begin with and is now turning sour on it. Yes, the riot issue is sticking. President Trump has his answer, sending the FBI and U.S. Marshals to assist in Kenosha. If Joe Biden has a concrete solution to the problem of American cities in flames, he’s keeping it to himself.”
James. S. Robbins, USA Today
The left argues that Trump is exacerbating the riots.
The left argues that Trump is exacerbating the riots.
“At the start of and throughout his news conference Monday evening, President Trump attacked Joe Biden for condemning violence but not specifically left-wing perpetrators of it. By the end of the news conference, Trump not only pointedly declined to condemn right-wing violence at the same demonstrations, he voluntarily defended it…
“Biden has repeatedly condemned the violence that has occurred in cities across the country, often in broad terms. He has drawn criticism from Trump and his allies for not more specifically highlighting left-wing violence or mentioning antifa, but Biden has referenced ‘anarchists’ and said he condemns violence on both sides of the political spectrum. ‘I condemn violence of every kind by anyone, whether on the left or the right,’ Biden said Sunday. Trump was given his own chance to acknowledge and condemn violence perpetrated by his supporters, and he notably took a hard pass — failing to even offer the broad type of denunciation that Biden has stated.”
Aaron Blake, Washington Post
“In this atmosphere — where the wrong word or action can encourage bloodshed — there is one urgent, overriding political question: Is a candidate calming the situation or inflaming it for his or her perceived advantage?…
“Remember in April when Trump tweeted, ‘LIBERATE MICHIGAN!,’ seemingly with the aim of rallying armed protesters against that state’s public health measures in response to the pandemic? In the same Twitter spasm, he sent the message: ‘LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!’… More recently, Trump described a caravan of MAGA activists streaming into Portland, Ore., to confront the left as ‘Great Patriots!’ And he later tried to explain away their aggressiveness…
“If you went up to a Trump supporter in Portland — someone armed with a MAGA hat, pepper spray, a paintball gun and maybe a little something more — and asked if he or she thought that Trump had their back, the only reasonable response would be ‘Absolutely!’ But if you went up to an anarchist holding a molotov cocktail and asked if Biden had their back, the response would almost certainly be that Biden is a tool of the establishment, bought and sold by Wall Street and alternately manipulated by Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Beef and the prison-industrial complex. The difference here could hardly be more dramatic.”
Michael Gerson, Washington Post
“Remember the arson and destruction in Minneapolis after police killed George Floyd? A video went viral showing a black-clad man with an umbrella in one hand and a hammer in another, smashing windows. Minneapolis police said he was suspected of white supremacist ties and was trying to incite rioting. He succeeded. ‘Until the actions of...'Umbrella Man,'’ police said, ‘the protests had been relatively peaceful.’…
“When a caravan of armed Trump supporters headed to Portland this weekend, undoubtedly emboldened by praise for the Kenosha murder suspect, more death was in the cards. Videos showed the extremists driving their trucks into pedestrian protesters, spraying mace into their faces. Trump encouraged them on Twitter… it is Trump and his supporters who bear much of the responsibility for turning mostly peaceful anti-racism protests into battlegrounds.”
Frida Ghitis, CNN
“Trump has the power, simply by speaking sense to his base, to deescalate this madness. So please, Mr. President, do your job! Tell your fans, your base, not to go into strange towns looking for trouble. Tell them to leave their beloved weapons at home and to be considerate of people with different views. If you insist on going to Kenosha this week, you should point out to your people that peaceful protest is a constitutional right and is about as American as it gets. And you should encourage them to listen respectfully to what the protesters are saying instead of calling them traitors and attacking them with paintballs or other weapons.”
Ellis Cose, USA Today
“Ahead of the recent rash of protests — as well as the shooting of Jacob Blake by a police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, that set them off — a Yahoo!/YouGov poll found that 48 percent of Americans view Trump as ‘the source of the chaos,’ and only 21 percent of Americans believe he can, or will, protect them from the chaos…
“[A more recent poll] found 59 percent of Americans disapproved of the Republican message at the GOP’s convention, which… focused heavily on America being in chaos due to Democratic mismanagement — and that 62 percent saw Blake’s shooting as part of a broader problem in how Black Americans are treated by law enforcement…
“The concerns suggested by this polling underscore an important reality: All the unrest happening in the US right now, which Trump has gleefully painted in apocalyptic terms as the country’s future should Democratic nominee Joe Biden win in November, is happening on Trump’s watch, not Biden’s. And although Portland and other cities experiencing violence and unrest are indeed led by Democrats, it’s hard to see what a Trump reelection could do to suddenly bring calm to the country given they would likely remain under Democratic leadership during a second Trump term.”
Cameron Peters, Vox
