President a convenient scapegoat for failings of Democrat leaders

Protesters raise fists in solidarity in Glendale, California. Picture: AFP

Black lives do matter but the fact in the US is those lives have been improving.

It is crucial journalists tell the whole truth and not use race tragedies to parade their own moral virtue. In the riots that have followed the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis by police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25 some facts have gone AWOL in the rush to blame President Donald Trump.

First up, Minneapolis is a Democrat city with a Democrat mayor and Minnesota is a Democrat state that has voted Democrat more consistently than any state outside the old South.

Most of the cities racked by protests that have descended into rioting since Floyd’s killing are also Democrat, where police commissioners answer to Democrat mayors.

Speaking last Saturday week in Florida, President Trump said, “The death of George Floyd on the streets of Minneapolis was a grave tragedy. It should never have happened. It has filled Americans all over the country with horror, anger and grief.” Trump said he had spoken with Floyd’s family “and expressed the sorrow of our entire nation for their loss”.

He went on to criticise protests that had descended into looting, saying: “It does not serve the interests of justice or any citizen of any race, colour or creed for the government to give in to anarchy …” Most voters, white and black, would agree.

It is typical of Trump’s personality that he was not able to adopt a more presidential tone in the following days to try to bring the nation together. It is typical of his political opportunism that he would allow the use of teargas to engineer a photo opportunity with a Bible in hand outside Washington’s St John’s Episcopal Church as he flagged calling in the military if governors did not call out their National Guard. Many in the media were shocked, too young apparently to remember the same happened in the 1992 LA riots.

Trump may just win a second term in November if more journalists do not start accurately reporting crimes by protesters and political opportunism by Democrat states. The New York Times reported last Wednesday that Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo was forced to criticise Democrat New York Mayor Bill De Blasio for “how he and the Police Department had handled what turned into a rash of looting across mid-town Manhattan on Monday” before the 11pm curfew.

Journalists need to question their own easy assumptions about race and the President if they expect readers to trust their work. Sure, Trump is a crass opportunist but there is no evidence he is a racist: his record on economic growth before the coronavirus cut unemployment rates of African-Americans to post-war lows.

Nor does research show policing in the US is riven by racism. As appalling as the video is of Mr Chauvin using his knee against Floyd’s neck to crush the life out of a man suspected only of using a counterfeit $20 note, policing in the wider US is improving.

The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday published Heather McDonald of the Manhattan Institute, author of The War On Cops. McDonald writes: “Police officers fatally shot 1004 people last year, most … armed. African-Americans were about a quarter … (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015.” In 2018 African-Americans comprised 53 per cent of homicide offenders, committed 60 per cent of robberies but were only 13 per cent of the population. Police officers are 18.5 times more likely to be shot by a black male than an unarmed black man is to be killed by a police officer.

Imprisonment rates in the black community have been falling since the drugs scourge of the 1990s. The Pew Research Centre says from 2007 to 2017 black imprisonment nationally fell from 592,900 to 475,900, while white imprisonment fell from 499,800 to 426,500, showing the gap between the two groups falling from 93,100 to 49,400.

For people who believe black lives matter the figures offer an uncomfortable truth: intraracial crime is far more common than interracial crime. Most black murder victims are killed by other black people. Lest people think this is racist, the same applies to white Americans: most white murder victims are killed by other whites.

In 24 years as a daily newspaper editor I reached the same conclusion about progressive politicians that some African-Americans have about the Democrats after former vice-president Joe Biden told a New York radio interview last month that real black people would not vote for Trump. Progressive governments take the support of minorities for granted.

Queensland and NT Labor governments have a history of harvesting Aboriginal votes only to channel funding earmarked for them to white public servants. This is the key to former prime minister Tony Abbott’s friendship with Aboriginal leaders Noel Pearson and Warren Mundine, who both know many politicians on the left use Aboriginal issues for political advantage among young voters.

Black American protesters have every right to protest about Floyd’s killing. They don’t have the right to loot, burn and assault. Media consumers see through journalists’ attempts to defend such behaviour to damage Trump.

The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC have not apologised for the failures of the politically driven Russiagate hoax. They published allegations from paid commentators who were former Democrat national security staff, such as President Barack Obama’s intelligence director, James Clapper. Clapper appeared regularly in the media to stoke Russiagate claims, including in the ABC Four Corners three-part “Story of the Century”, having already testified in secret that he had seen no evidence to support his allegations.

The media continues to claim falsely that Trump allowed COVID-19 to affect the US disproportionately when its death rates are between a half and a third those of most countries in Europe and hospitals are run by states, many Democrat.

Economist Paul Krugman in The New York Times claims black Americans are the big losers of the Trump era. His piece on the Floyd killing last Wednesday failed to mention employment gains by African-Americans from 2016-19.

Big-C conservatives loved by left-wing media for their criticism of Trump — think George Will of The Washington Post and Bret Stephens of The New York Times — continue to misunderstand Trump’s voters. Will’s piece on June 2 was so full of bile it should be used in Trump’s campaign advertising as evidence of “Fake News”.

Much of the media has derided Trump on trade with China and criticism of the World Health Organisation. Yet a 4000-word AP piece last week based on leaked recordings from inside the WHO suggests even that organisation was frustrated by China’s initial stonewalling on COVID-19.

Trump, latest in a line of presidents to criticise unfair Chinese trade practices, has moved the dial globally on Xi Jinping’s use of trade as a lever for territorial expansion and to silence foreign critics of his internal repression.

Trump’s treatment of women is appalling but how can news consumers trust reporters who have failed to look at Tara Reade’s claims against Biden? Journalists are not a political resistance force. They need to write the truth about black lives and the President.

Chris Mitchell is an ambassador for the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation.