Last week some ridiculous but ultimately dangerous hooligans cheering on President Donald Trump rushed the U.S. Capitol in a riot. Five people, including a Capitol Police officer and a protester shot by law enforcement officers, died. It was a tragic, dark day for our nation – although one we might have seen coming after Democrats and the national media excused left-wing riots for months and refused to take Trump supporters’ concerns about election integrity seriously.
But the incident opened an interesting question.
As authorities grappled with restoring order, President-elect Joe Biden weighed in on Trump’s role.
“The words of a president matter, no matter how good or bad that president is,” the Democrat said, in criticizing comments Trump made before the melee ensued.
“At their best, the words of a president can inspire. At their worst, they can incite,” added Biden, who then urged Trump to “fulfill his oath and defend the Constitution and demand an end to this siege.”
Biden, in his words, not so subtly suggested that Trump was responsible for instigating the riot, even though the president made no call for violence, and the rioters involved were a small fraction of the tens of thousands who turned out to protest the Electoral College certification.
But based on what Biden said, here’s a question for those who want Trump tossed out of office and possibly prosecuted for his comments before rally-goers became rioters:
When do we arrest Barack Obama?
In July 2016, Micah Johnson, an Army veteran who was black, parked along the street in downtown Dallas. Armed with a high-powered rifle, Johnson opened fire on cops escorting Black Lives Matter protesters demonstrating against police violence against black Americans.
Five cops died, seven other people were wounded.
Dallas police noted that Johnson was a fan of the New Black Panther Party, whom he had connected with through Facebook. When asked about a motive, Chief David Brown said Johnson told negotiators during a stand-off that he was “upset about the recent police shootings,” referring to incidents of black men dying at police hands in Minnesota and Louisiana.
“The suspect said he was upset at white people. The suspect stated he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”
As the Bible of the left, The New York Times, characterized it, “The shooting was the kind of retaliatory violence that people have feared through two years of protests around the country against deaths in police custody, forcing yet another wrenching shift in debates over race and criminal justice that had already deeply divided the nation.”
What happened in the two years before Johnson started pulling the trigger?
Well, in November 2014, grand juries in Missouri and New York declined to return indictments against white police officers who had been involved in the deaths of two black men, Michael Brown and Eric Garner, respectively.
When the Garner case was announced, Obama said, “When anybody in this country is not being treated equally under the law, that is a problem.”
In early January 2015, NBC News reported that Obama had been more frequently using the word racism in comments – “a term he has used sparingly in the past when describing conditions in America today – to describe the challenges blacks and other minorities face.”
NBC noted Obama had said repeatedly that racial discrimination was “embedded deeply in society,” and had described conditions, such as income inequality between whites and blacks, as a “legacy of Jim Crow.”
In April 2015, after the death of Freddie Gray, a black man, during an arrest in Baltimore, Obama said America needed to do some “soul searching.” “This has been going on for a long time,” he said. “This is not new, and we shouldn’t pretend that it’s new.”
At an appearance a month later, Obama said, “That sense of unfairness, powerlessness, people not hearing their voices, that’s helped fuel some of the protests that we’ve seen in places like Baltimore, Ferguson and right here in New York.”
In June 2015, after a deranged white supremacist shot and killed nine worshipers at a black church in South Carolina, Obama told a podcaster, “It is incontrovertible that race relations have improved significantly during my lifetime and yours, and that opportunities have opened up, and that attitudes have changed. That is a fact.”
“What is also true,” he added, “is that the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives — you know, that casts a long shadow. And that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on. We’re not cured of it.” When he was asked what “it” is, Obama answered, “racism.”
Speaking at the NAACP annual conference in July 2015, Obama maintained that differences in education and health care were “a legacy of hundreds of years of slavery and segregation, and structural inequalities that compounded over generations.”
“Partly it’s a result of continuing, if sometimes more subtle, bigotry,” he said. But, he added, it was the “criminal justice system in America” that harbored “a long history of inequity” and remained “particularly skewed by race and by wealth, a source of inequity that has ripple effects on families and on communities and ultimately on our nation.”
On July 7, while in Poland, Obama commented on the incidents of police slayings of black men in Minnesota and Louisiana.
“All of us as Americans should be troubled by these shootings, because these are not isolated incidents. They’re symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system,” said Obama, who argued that “change has been too slow.”
The then-president pointed out:
“African Americans are 30 percent more likely than whites to be pulled over. After being pulled over, African Americans and Hispanics are three times more likely to be searched. Last year, African Americans were shot by police at more than twice the rate of whites. African Americans are arrested at twice the rate of whites. African American defendants are 75 percent more likely to be charged with offenses carrying mandatory minimums. They receive sentences that are almost 10 percent longer than comparable whites arrested for the same crime.”
“If you add it all up,” Obama continued, “the African American and Hispanic population, who make up only 30 percent of the general population, make up more than half of the incarcerated population. … And when incidents like this occur, there’s a big chunk of our fellow citizenry that feels as if because of the color of their skin, they are not being treated the same. And that hurts. … We should be able to step back, reflect, and ask ourselves, what can we do better so that everybody feels as if they’re equal under the law?”
The next day, Micah Johnson killed five cops in Dallas.
On many occasions in making these comments, Obama was careful to acknowledge that police officers have a tough job, work hard, face dangers rarely seen by the rest of us and try to be fair. He also has denounced the violence perpetrated by many in the names of some of the people killed in these incidents.
Yet for nearly two years, rarely, if at all, did Obama suggest that the people who wound up entangled with police in these situations were responsible for their actions.
Instead, Micah Johnson and millions of other black Americans heard the nation’s first black president tell them time and time and time again – much like Trump complaining about “stolen” or “rigged” elections – that racism and bigotry were an integral “part of our DNA” and a feature of “the system” – even though Obama had reached the pinnacle of that system by convincing tens of millions of white Americans to vote for him twice.
In the aftermath of the attack, the conservative Investors Business Daily asked in an editorial if Obama, like Trump now, had incited Micah Johnson to open fire.
“At every opportunity, he’s taken pains to foment public anger when a cop kills a black person — often long before the facts are known — while issuing little more than terse statements when police are targeted by killers,” the paper said.
“So is Obama to blame for the Dallas killings? No, not directly. Only the murderer who pulled a trigger, along with those who might have helped plan and execute the attack, are to blame. But by the standards of responsibility constantly being propagated by the left — who tried to pin Rep. Gabby Giffords’ shooting on Sarah Palin and the terrorist attack at a gay nightclub in Florida on Christian conservatives — he shares in the blame. Rather than call for calm and racial healing, Obama’s rhetoric has only served to inflame animosity, fuel anger and, arguably, help justify those extremists who believe that, like Obama, ‘change has been too slow.’”
On the other hand, as Republicans at the 2016 GOP national convention sought to cast Obama was the villain, Roll Call columnist Jonathan Allen wrote, “Of course, Obama is not to blame for police being ambushed, nor is he responsible for terrorist attacks in Europe. He doesn’t condone either. He has spoken out about both types of killing far too often.”
In a separate interview, Congressman G.K. Butterfield, a North Carolina Democrat and chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said, “If someone goes in a building and assassinates five police officers, they are a terrorist and they are not a part of the Black Lives Matter movement. Let’s be intelligent enough to separate the issues we are debating today.”
Fast forward to today and the controversy surrounding Trump and Capitol riot, and both teams could just swap jerseys.
Biden is right. The president’s words do matter. And those of a divisive, grievance-mongering Democrat should not be judged differently than those of a divisive, grievance-mongering Republican. One standard would not be just helpful; it’s necessary.
Thus, if you now want Trump held accountable by the criminal justice system for five deaths the destruction at the Capitol, the question is: when do we arrest Obama for five deaths in Dallas?
You are comparing apples to oranges. At no time did Obama call anyone to congregate in the thousands for the specific purpose of protesting anything. Trump fomented an angry response by his followers specifically lying about election fraud despite 60 courts including the Supreme Court finding no merit in his charges. He told them to come to DC and protest. He used vitriol to enflame passions specific to January 6th. Obama has never done that.
At what point do his supporters believe the truth as determined by judges appointed by Trump? At what point does Trump stop this reality TV farce of his presidency? If our leaders fail to acknowledge REALITY, we are doomed.
While this article gives its readers plenty to think about, had Obama gone to Dallas & held a rally in the midst of what was going on & voiced his thoughts we’d have Apples to Apples. The electoral college certification was scheduled. He chose to schedule a rally on the 6th at 11am per his ex-Twitter account. We’re gonna March down to the capitol (I’m coming with you) & we have to be strong? So as soon as you pull up that Ferguson Rally Speech, or that Dallas Texas Rally Speech, etc… don’t hold your breath on that Obama arrest.
Theyre not arresting Trump. They are impeaching Trump. If you think its the equivalent actions contact your representatives in Congress and have Obama impeached. After all, Obamas to blame for everything, right? Look at him, look at her, look at them, everyone does wrong and is to blame, except the moron in chief that lost the election.
What a stupid excuse for logic this article is. A junior high debate student might have made a better case. As someone who dislikes both Obama and Trump I can say unequivocally that Obama was never as incendiary as Trump.