For three months, leftists in the media and politics celebrated the riots that were tearing apart some of America's Democrat-run cities.  For conservatives, it became a running joke that, even as the cities burned and rioters fought with law enforcement, Democrats insisted that all these scenes were aberrant and that everything was "mostly peaceful."

All this changed after police shot a man wanted on a warrant for rape, who fought with the officers and had a knife.  In response, and without knowing the facts, BLM and Antifa destroyed large swaths of Kenosha, Wisconsin.  The public turned on BLM, and the Biden team and the media went into damage control.  On Tuesday, CNN hit the damage control button with such force that it produced a staggeringly dishonest hit piece.

This post looks at just a few of the worst arguments in the CNN piece.  For a more detailed analysis, you can go here.

Frida Ghitis, a former CNN producer and correspondent, and a current CNN and Washington Post contributor, wrote an article entitled "Trump's depraved plan to try to win reelection."  She opens with an opinionated insult and then gets down to the business of "proving" with "facts" that all the violence in America is Trump's fault.

Ghitis's opening fact is her claim that "Kellyanne Conway confirmed what we all knew: 'The more chaos, anarchy and vandalism reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who's best on public safety and law and order'..."

This is the same lie that Biden uttered in Pittsburgh and which I debunked here.  Suffice it to say that Conway was not saying Trump was inciting violence to win.  She was only pointing out the fact that, with Democrat-caused violence raging around them, voters were turning to Trump.  Voters like these Kenosha leaders:

Democrats didn’t want the country to see local leaders praise Trump for his response in Kenosha. pic.twitter.com/QyOYHGYMFm

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) September 1, 2020

Regarding Trump's Kenosha visit, Ghitis claims that Trump's visit to Kenosha "stokes chaos."

That is why he is insisting on going to Kenosha where an apparent supporter faces homicide charges for the killing of anti-racism protesters. Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers is pleading with the President to stay away because he knows Trump's presence there can be explosive.

Ghitis is a day late and a riot short.  The violence was stoked long before Trump set foot on the ground.  Moreover, if Ghitis were even slightly honest, she would acknowledge that Kyle Rittenhouse has such a good self-defense claim that even the New York Times' timeline strongly suggests it.  Indeed, in an unusual move, the prosecutor's charging papers spell out his defense.  This hints that the prosecution is bending to political winds and knows that it has no case.

Rittenhouse's attorney talked to Tucker Carlson about the complete set of elements for self-defense in the young man's actions:

Ghitis charges Trump with vowing at his inauguration to bring about "American carnage."  In fact, Trump was vowing to end the carnage that Obama brought to the less fortunate in America: "This American carnage stops right here and stops right now."

In a complete departure from reality, Ghitis manages to say riots by people advancing Democrat ideas (defunding the police, redistribution of wealth, systemic racism), and taking place in Democrat-run cities in Democrat-run states, are...Trump's fault:

Still, he wants Americans to blame Democratic governors and mayors — and fear that Biden will make it worse. But it is Trump and his supporters who bear much of the responsibility for turning mostly peaceful anti-racism protests into battlegrounds. And the strife is not just continuing, it is intensifying; becoming bloodier, deadlier and riskier for the nation.

Not content with that broad statement, Ghitis goes farther, holding that the entire fault for the riots lies with "umbrella man," a man carrying (yes) an umbrella, who started smashing windows in Minneapolis.  Based on no evidence whatsoever, the left has claimed that "umbrella man" was a right-wing provocateur whose Machiavellian behavior forced leftists to riot all over America.  The police have never located this mysterious man, which makes him a convenient scapegoat.

Ghitis says the Republican convention further stoked violence by having as speakers the McCloskeys — "armed civilians made famous by waving their weapons at protesters."  Ghitis somehow forgets the part about hundreds of protesters who broke a fence to get to the McCloskeys' property and then hurled threats of rape and murder at them.  The Second Amendment isn't part of Ghitis's frame of reference, either.

There's more, but this post allows for only a limited amount of attacking the myriad lies.  Again, you can read more here.

Image: Created by Andrea Widburg using a Pixabay free photo.