Miranda Devine: Media's 'hypocritical double standard' on riots causes more division, violence
Fox News contributor Miranda Devine reacts to the media's coverage of the Capitol Hill riots compared to the anti-police violence over the summer.
What a difference a week makes. On Wednesday, we discovered that House Democrats actually support police. They are against mob violence. They believe in law and order. They believe in harsh punishment for rule-breakers. They believe in accountability.
They care deeply about civility. They believe words matter. They abhor intemperate rhetoric. They are against coarse language. Fancy that.
They believe in a peaceful transition of power, at least this time, as opposed to 2016. They believe in the Electoral College. They believe in the legitimacy of the people’s vote.
They believe in walls, at least when it comes to protecting their own place of work. They even believe in bringing in the National Guard to quell civil unrest, at least when it comes to preserving their own peace.
TRUMP IMPEACHED BY HOUSE OVER CAPITOL RIOTS, BECOMES FIRST PRESIDENT TO FACE REBUKE TWICE
They believe in guns, at least when their own safety is at risk.
They revere American history and institutional norms. They honor the Founding Fathers. Hah!
This is what we learned while watching the Democrats in the House impeach President Trump for the second pointless time in 13 months.
We learned that they, almost to a man and a woman, suffer from an acute case of hypocrite-itis.
NANCY PELOSI WORE THE SAME DRESS FOR BOTH IMPEACHMENTS
Where have they been the past four years with these noble ideas that conservatives have been begging them to defend?
Perhaps if Democrats had not normalized and encouraged violence when organized BLM-Antifa mobs began rampaging through our cities, the tragic events of Jan. 6 at the Capitol would not have occurred.
As Republican Rep. Pat Fallon of Texas said Wednesday:
"Last summer the Antifa and BLM riots swept across our country. Businesses were destroyed, cities burned. It was not like the horrible hours we had on January 6. But rather, they went on for weeks and in some cases months.
"So if there’s any silver lining in this dark cloud, it’s that our friends across the aisle have come to realize that riots are bad. We conservatives have known this all along."
Perhaps if Democrats had not weaponized the intelligence agencies to spy on Trump’s campaign, perhaps if they had not used the Steele dossier to undermine the legitimacy of his presidency and accuse him of colluding with Russia to rig the 2016 election, perhaps if they had not hobbled his administration with the three-year Mueller investigation, perhaps more Trump voters would have been willing to accept the legitimacy of a Biden presidency.
Perhaps if Dems had not already launched a spiteful partisan impeachment last year, their efforts to highlight the president’s shortcomings would have fallen on fewer deaf ears this time.
As Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio said, it took just 19 minutes into Trump’s presidency for the Washington Post to trumpet: "Campaign to impeach President Trump has begun."
"And now with just one week left," Jordan said Wednesday, "they’re still trying."
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Perhaps if Dems had reflected on their own culpability in the attempted assassination of Republican Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana by a Bernie Sanders supporter, their sanctimonious lectures Wednesday would be more credible.
"I’ve seen the evil of political violence firsthand and it needs to stop," Scalise said Wednesday. "But all of us need to be unequivocal calling it out when we see it, not just when it comes from the other side of the aisle."
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Perhaps if Joe Biden had not spent two years muscling up to Trump, with threats like "I’d smack him in the mouth" and "I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him," Biden’s pitch for civility might be more palatable.
Perhaps if Democrats had not spent the last four years calling Trump a dictator, authoritarian, Nazi, Hitler, white supremacist, anti-Semite, bigot, racist, hater, dangerous, demented and insane, then the hyperbole they used against him Wednesday might have been more effective.
The Aesop’s fable of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" comes to mind. Democrats and their media handmaidens have spent four years demonizing Trump, using the most outlandish hyperbole their fevered imaginations could dream up.
So when finally, at the bitter end, when he behaves in a way that angers even his most loyal supporters, there is nowhere left to go in the demonization department.
Hence the absurdity of Wednesday’s rhetoric in the House, as Democrats overreached yet again, traducing the president as a "white supremacist" — or "racist in chief," as Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan called him.
Instead of impeaching the president, the House could have censured him and gathered a lot more Republican votes.
His refrain since November about having won in a "landslide" was reckless and deluded but it had nothing to do with racism, and his speech at the Ellipse in DC on Jan. 6 explicitly called for the crowd to "peacefully" protest.
How was he to know that the Capitol would not be adequately guarded, and the mob would so easily smash their way inside?
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Capitol Police had been left like lambs to the slaughter in part because the cop-hating mayor of DC, Muriel Bowser, wrote to the Department of Justice the day before the protests specifically to reject federal reinforcements.
The flexible morality and selective outrage of the Democrats and their media boosters is so dishonest, it makes your head spin.