Jeffries: Comparing ‘Insurrection’ to BLM Protests is ‘Race-Baiting’

Sunday on MSNBC’s The Sunday Show, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries commented on the possible defense of President Trump’s Senate impeachment trial to equate the Jan. 6 unrest at the U.S. Capitol to Black Lives Matter rioting, calling it a “false equivalence.”

“[I]t’s absolutely ridiculous, but it’s not surprising,” Jeffries blathered. “It’s a false equivalence, and I believe it will be an attempt to engage in vicious race-baiting. The notion that you are going to equate some sporadic instances of civil unrest… how can you compare that to a violent attack on the Capitol when the president at the time summoned the mob to Washington, D.C., then incited the mob, and then directed the mob to march on the Capitol as part of an insurrection to halt the peaceful transfer of power, undermine our democracy, and resulting in the deaths of several Americans, including Officer Sicknick?”

Fact check: Trump not only did not “summon a mob” to the Capitol, he told the demonstrators to go home peacefully. There was no insurrection to undermine democracy; there was Antifa-instigated vandalism, which Trump supporters tried to prevent, by a group that initially was literally ushered into the Capitol building by local police.

“The two cannot be compared, and it shows the weakness of the argument that President Trump should be acquitted. He should not. He should be convicted.”

Trump won’t be convicted because he committed no crime. But Jeffries is correct about one thing: the two cannot be compared. The chaos on Capitol Hill does not remotely compare to the nationwide Marxist revolution of the Black Lives Matter movement, which Jeffries dismissed as “sporadic instances of civil unrest.”