Don Lemon's timbre has never quivered so much.  Even when he wept while reciting his own philippic to President Trump, the CNN host wasn't this unmistakably grave.

"The rioting has to stop ... it's showing up in the polling, it's showing up in focus groups," he warned Tuesday night, referencing the nightly violence in cities like Portland, Ore. and Kenosha, Wis.  Lemon was conversing with fellow host and quarantine scofflaw Chris Cuomo, but he was speaking directly to his target audience: Democrats, elected or otherwise.

"Joe Biden has got to address [the riots]," Lemon urged.  Like a longcase, Biden's social-media intern keyed out a tweet the next morning.  Message received, apparently: "I promise you that as president, I will protect America.  I will protect you and your family." 

There was no explicit mention of riots, the conscious conflagration swallowing small businesses on urban high streets.  Nor were the threats defined.  Instead of opting for the usual liberal vernacular of "shadowy" or "fascistic" dangers to democracy, Biden quoted, likely by mistake, French free-market economist Frédéric Bastiat, calling the threats "seen and unseen."

Days before, Biden (or, more likely, his Black Lives Matter fangirl adviser Symone Sanders) expressed remorse over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, lamenting that "yet another [b]lack American is a victim of excessive force." 

We know that excessive force is in the eyes of the beholder and the inevitable camera lens that captures these ructions.  Footage of Blake's scuff with law enforcement showed him not only resisting arrest, but retreating to his vehicle for a knife.  Dispatch audio revealed that Blake was trespassing and had an outstanding warrant for a felony.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, said the poet.  Biden, holding the thyrsus of social justice high, leading his legions of mesmerized devotees like Bacchus, marched heedlessly into the debunked narrative of police-on-black brutality.

Now Team Biden is hopping back after its leap of misplaced faith.  In a brief follow-up video, candidate Joe decried the mayhem, exhorting rioters to trade their billy clubs for olive branches: "burning down communities is not protest."

Good for Biden on this count.  He either didn't get or is thoroughly ignoring the New York Times memo about property destruction not equating to violence.  Disregarding the de rigueur violence-is-not-really-violence cod philosophy of the left is savvy political positioning.  But look what it took to move Biden to the idea that used car dealerships aren't secret centcoms of white supremacy.  Battleground-state polls are squinching.  Trump's closing the gap, no doubt in part thanks to riot exhaustion.  Voters can forgive youthful excess for one night.  Maybe even a worked up crowd letting off steam for a few days.  But three months in a major city?  There's only so much flames and looting upstanding middle-class adults want to see that isn't on cable-TV policiers. 

Democratic executives are starting to cave, after giving tacit approval to the smoking out of their metro downtowns.  Wisconsin's Governor Evers has requested that the Wisconsin National Guard step in to temper the Kenosha unrest.  Oregon's governor, Kate Brown, put out a Twitter dictum, practically begging the malcontents to vacate: "It's time for the violence and vandalism to end so Portland can focus on the important work to be done to achieve real change for racial justice."  With that kind of stern ultimatum, it's a virtual guarantee those Portland rascals will pick up their trash and put away their toys before heading home.  Even D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser is joining the tut-tut bandwagon, criticizing BLM activists after they bawled out white diners for not showing enough fealty to the cause.

If spectators look closely, they can see Democratic campaign coaches on the sidelines calling the next audible.  After giving rioters their head, and then trying to re-establish their authority, the next step for liberal proconsuls is to point the finger at the current Oval Office occupant.  Don Lemon broadcasted the new play: "What's happening now is happening under Donald Trump's watch."

The sleight of tongue follows a simple but broken syllogism.  Donald Trump is the president.  Urban unrest is occurring during the Trump presidency.  Therefore, Trump is to blame.  The logical trace breaks from the fact that it isn't Republicans setting Quiznos franchises aflame.  Antifa, the main perpetrator, is left-wing — its political allegiance is unambiguous.

Putting the riots on Trump is akin to blaming the March for Life for the this country's unconscionable near-million abortions a year.  Those who do pretend as if the President absconds from the White House residence at night, jets to Wisconsin, and joins the black-clad marauders in dumping the combustible contents of a jerrican on a Dollar Tree before tossing in a lit matchstick from a Trump Hotels matchbook 

If Trump wants a Nixon-like blowout on law-and-order messaging, he should emphasize over and over again that it's not his people turning cities into scenes out of The Warrior.  The rampaging brigands are leftists.  And America's premier leftist political party was fine with the smoldering ruins until public opinion changed its mind.

Image: Fuzheado via Wikimedia Commons.