Biden’s speech yesterday will help him, but he was careful to denounce violence without naming anyone on the Left responsible for the violence and while making it sound as if it’s been right-wing militias driving the disorder,
Ben Shapiro noted this here:
Joe Biden name-checked "white nationalists" once, "white supremacists" once, "right-wing militias" twice and "armed militias" once in his supposedly unifying anti-violence speech yesterday. He did not mention Antifa or BLM. This is gaslighting and cowardice.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) September 1, 2020
Meanwhile, progressives are now shamelessly reframing the debate. As the headline of a Michelle Goldberg column puts it, “Biden Condemned Violence. Why Won’t Trump?”
This is completely ridiculous. Trump shouldn’t have tweeted support for the vehicular counterprotest in Portland, but he’s denounced the violence in the harshest terms since the outset. And, by the way, in following much of the media coverage, you would have missed that it was a member of Antifa who shot and killed a counterprotester, not the other way around.
The answer to the mayhem is for authorities to deploy enough force to completely control the streets, to make ample arrests, and to vigorously prosecute everyone charged. Portland now has a long history of doing none of the above.
I wrote a column about all of this today.