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JoelKS's avatar

I have a minor correction with respect to the criticism of Time over this Trumpstatement:

"TRUMP: I've watched in Portland and I watched in Seattle, and I've watched in Minneapolis, Minnesota and other places. People do heinous acts, far more serious than what took place on Jan. 6. And nothing happened to these people." and the claim of this post that

"Nothing they did was nearly as heinous as attacking the United States Congress and the police officers defending it."

It is a lie that "nothing happened to these people [who committed acts during the BLM protests."

It's also true that *more* heinous crimes were committed during the BLM protests---they just were not for the most part committed by protesters.

1. A law enforcement officer was assassinated by a member of the Boogaloo Bois, Steve Carrillo. (www.courthousenews.com/judge-sentences-boogaloo-extremist-to-41-years-for-killing-federal-officer/)

2. Stephan Cannon, a looter unaffiliated with the BLM protests, murdered a St. Louis police captain, David Dorn, during a burglary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_David_Dorn)

3. Among the people who set fire to a Minneapolis police station was Harrison Hunter, a member of the Boogaloo Bois, who also fired into the police station while people were inside (https://www.police1.com/george-floyd-protest/articles/man-sentenced-to-4-years-for-minneapolis-police-station-fire-nKd5RboPPFKRy53f/)

All of these murders or attempted murders were more heinous than what happened at the Capitol. As for the rest of trump's claims, what is remarkable is that with something like 20 million people (https://www.brookings.edu/articles/americans-continue-to-protest-for-racial-justice-60-years-after-the-march-on-washington/) protesting over the course of a year, there were only somewhat more than 300 federal arrests and 286 persons actually charged (https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-race-and-ethnicity-suburbs-health-racial-injustice-7edf9027af1878283f3818d96c54f748). More were charged locally for less serious crimes.

At the Capitol, several thousand people managed to commit over 1000 federal crimes over the course of a few hours, with 174 involving deadly weapons (https://www.jan-6.com/post/doj-releases-updated-statistics-on-charges-guilty-pleas-convictions-sentencing-in-the-january-6t) and 608 charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding police officers.

That Trump is able to continue to tell such monstrous lies is, as this column suggests, only possible because journalists fail to do their job.

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Rick Massimo's avatar

Funny (rhetorically speaking) how we’re supposed to know he was kidding about Day One but we’re supposed to take him seriously about riots on every college campus in the country.

One other question that sort of applies to all these topics: If everyone misunderstands everything you say, have you ever considered speaking differently? Or is it always someone else’s responsibility to understand you?

And of course, when he says someone has done something “illegal,” the immediate response should be “What actual law are you saying they broke?”

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