How Politicians and Mainstream Media Spurred Riots in America: On-the-Ground Journalist

Julio Rosas, a senior writer at Townhall media and author of “Fiery But Mostly Peaceful: The 2020 Riots and the Gaslighting of America” in an interview on “Crossroads” program on July 23, 2022. {Screenshot/Epoch TV)

Violent riots that have led to looting, arson, and murder in American cities over the past two years have been spurred on by the media and political system, said Julio Rosas, a senior writer at Townhall.

The riot that took place after the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, is an example of how media coverage and politicians could aggravate the situation.

“Admittedly, when the first video came out showing what happened to Jacob Blake, it did look bad,“ Rosas said in a recent interview for EpochTV’s ”Crossroads“ program. ”But also my next reaction was, 'OK, wait, wait ... what happened before that? Because none of this makes sense.”

Rosas then found out that Blake was armed with a knife and was getting ready to kidnap the children in the backseat of the car, so the cops were trying to avoid a police chase with kids in the backseat.

In this video released by lawyer Ben Crump, Jacob Blake delivers a message from a hospital bed in Kenosha, Wis., on Sept. 5, 2020. @AttorneyCrump Twitter account/AFP via Getty Images

Blake was shot by a police officer while he was resisting arrest by attempting to enter a vehicle with children in it. Three police officers tried to arrest him on an outstanding warrant after receiving a call from a woman who said her boyfriend was at her house but was not supposed to be there.

There were already riots happening in different cities after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis earlier that year.

“In 2020, the automatic reaction to something like that was like, 'Well, we’re just going to start burning things down, we’re going to start attacking everything in sight.’ And that’s what happened,” Rosas said.

Reactions to Shooting in Kenosha

A police armored vehicle patrols an intersection while a building set afire by rioters burns in Kenosha, Wis., on Aug. 24, 2020. Brandon Bell/Getty Images

After the incident in Kenosha, players from NBA, WNBA, and other sports teams stopped playing games for a few days to protest the shooting of Blake.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes were criticized by state law enforcement officials for making “premature” and “inflammatory” statements.

Hours after the incident, Evers said in a statement that the man “was shot in the back multiple times, in broad daylight.”

“While we do not have all of the details yet, what we know for certain is that he is not the first Black man or person to have been shot or injured or mercilessly killed at the hands of individuals in law enforcement in our state or our country,” Evers added.

Barnes said the next day during a briefing that the shooting “was not an accident.”

“This wasn’t bad police work. This felt like some sort of vendetta being taken out on a member of our community,” Barnes added.

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The riots that erupted in Kenosha caused $50 million in damage, and the damage to city property alone was estimated at nearly $2 million, Rosas said.

Kenosha is a small city sandwiched between Milwaukee and Chicago, so it was easy for people to come in from the outside to wreak havoc, Rosas said.

CNN drew a public backlash for running the caption “Fiery But Mostly Peaceful Protests After Police Shooting” on its video report showing a reporter standing in front of burning buildings in Kenosha.

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A common refrain among rioters and their supporters was that business owners all had insurance and they could rebuild the buildings, so the destruction didn’t matter compared to the pain and suffering of people who were injured or killed by the police.

But when Rosas returned to Kenosha to research the riots for his book, “Fiery But Mostly Peaceful: The 2020 Riots and the Gaslighting of America,” he interviewed business owners who said their insurance companies had classified the damage as terrorism, so it wasn’t covered under their policies. Many of those business owners were minorities themselves.

Rosas said he was frustrated by the hard-left narrative that “the ends justify the means.”

Attacks on Federal Courthouse in Portland

A rioter kicks an entrance to the Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse after federal officers took shelter inside in Portland, Ore., on July 21, 2020. Nathan Howard/Getty Images

Mainstream media tend to downplay the riots, Rosas said. He compared the protest at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021—which the media immediately started calling “a riot” and later called “an insurrection”—to Antifa’s attacks on the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, in 2020, which the media described as a “protest.”

“A federal courthouse is not the same thing as the Capitol building, but they’re still attacking a seat of power of the federal government,” Rosas said.

When a fence was erected around the courthouse in July 2020 to deescalate tension between federal agents and rioters, a Portland commissioner fined the U.S. government a maximum amount of $500 for every 15 minutes it maintained the fence.

Chad Wolf, who was acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security at the time, said the department fully supported and would protect those who wished to protest in Portland peacefully, but what officers were seeing every night was “the complete opposite.”

The unrest in Portland followed a daily pattern when late afternoon and evening, peaceful protesters assembled and demonstrated, but after midnight, violence organized by agitators flared, said Richard Cline, then-deputy director of the Federal Protective Service (FPS).

Riot in Minneapolis

A police officer stands watch as a looted pawn shop burns in the background in Minneapolis on May 28, 2020. Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

In Rosas’s experience covering riots, he said the Minneapolis riot was the worst he'd seen in terms of scale, damage, number of deaths, and his own personal safety.

Protests in Minneapolis at that time were peaceful during the day, and on one occasion a church even came out to distribute snacks, Rosas said. But after nightfall, the demographics of protesters and their methods suddenly changed, Rosas explained.

The peaceful protesters left, and younger protesters wearing black clothing and bandanas or ski masks joined in, Rosas said. “Shortly thereafter, the rioters started attacking the third police precinct.”

“This is the night that the police officers had to evacuate, but it started by the rioters making the first move,” he said.

In riots that are “on the left wing side,” rioters always blame the cops, claiming that the police provoked them and they were just reacting, Rosas said, but in this case, at least, that wasn’t true.

“They were fully intending on setting that building on fire with the officers still inside,” he said.

Rosas called the political system behind this situation “anarcho-tyranny.” The effects of what happened two years ago are still being felt to this day, Rosas said, “because a lot of racial justice, a lot of racial equity policies were implemented following what happened with George Floyd in order to try to avoid a situation like that.”

The effects of these policies are, in many cases, not positive. For example, in Chicago, an increase in shootings has been seen not only in parts of the city where shooting rates were typically higher but also in areas that are supposedly safe, said Roses, who recently went to Chicago to report on shootings there.

The justice system in these cities is now “pro-criminal,” Rosas said.

“Who’s suffering the most from these policies? It’s minorities, and more specifically, black people,” he said.

Zachary Stieber, Lorenz Duchamps, and Tom Ozimek contributed to this report.