On Wednesday, Mayor Bill DeBlasio said this:
Asked today about the upcoming meeting, de Blasio told reporters, "I absolutely think they must denounce violence. I think everyone has to denounce violence."
He also said, "All protesters really have to take responsibility for the larger group they’re a part of."
Two police lieutenants were assaulted during a demonstration on the Brooklyn Bridge this past Saturday. One lieutenant suffered a broken nose. Police are looking for seven suspects and nine witnesses they say are linked to the attack.
De Blasio, speaking to reporters after an unrelated visit to Rikers Island, said, “You cannot talk about social change and then commit an act of violence against a police officer. It makes no sense. It denigrates the cause. It undermines the legitimacy. It’s illegal, it’s wrong, it’s immoral.”
Then the mayor reiterated a call he made last week for protesters to actively stop violence and cooperate with the police.
On Sunday, Rep. Peter King made an appearance on Fox News to claim that Mayor DeBlasio had not denounced protesters' calls for violence.
Do the quotes above sound like anything other than a denunciation of calls for violence? Does Fox News have Nexis-Lexis, or The Google? Could they, too, have found this quote and asked him whether he saw that as a denunciation of the calls for violence from protesters, and whether he demanded that all protesters cooperate with police?
Of course they did and could have. But then they'd have to counter their preferred narrative that all liberals support police officers being murdered in cold blood.
Once again, this isn't binary. One can condemn senseless murders, whether by police or by a police hater. The tragedy in New York should be a moment where everyone can unify around the idea that brutal murders with a gun are unacceptable, no matter who is wielding it.
Peter King is now nominated for my Sunday Show Lying Liar of the Week. It's still early enough that others might leap over his frontrunner status but I doubt it.
