SATURDAY is supposed to be the most fun-filled night of the week. Alternatively, it can be spent watching Press Preview on Sky News.
One of the stories under discussion last Saturday evening, from the following day’s Sunday Times, had the headline ‘Charred ruins of Kenosha endanger Biden’s march to the presidency’. Written by the paper’s Washington Bureau Chief Josh Glancy, the article also contained the précis: ‘Black Lives Matter riots have left parts of the city looking more like Syria than Wisconsin. Democrats fear voters will be driven into the arms of Trump.’
This alarm is now spreading to CNN, MSNBC, the BBC and Channel 4. Evidently there is also worry in the newsroom at Sky, where the presenter of Press Preview, Gillian Joseph, did not enjoy hearing why the latest polls are moving in favour of dastardly Donald.
The Sunday Times’s summary of why Kenosha was ablaze throughout last week was a rare and overdue naming of Black Lives Matter as the perpetrators of villainous violence and vandalism. Or as contemptible CNN deadpanned: ‘Fiery but mostly peaceful protests’.
To explain the burning buildings behind him, the CNN reporter conceded that once night fell in Kenosha ‘things began to get a little more contentious’. That synopsis in the Sunday Times also betrayed, perhaps inadvertently, that the Democratic Party cares not a jot for businesses razed and people injured by the ‘contentious’ thuggery of the BLM mob; cynically, the Party’s politicians’ concern is solely electoral.
That disquiet seemingly is shared by Gillian Joseph, who anxiously asked her guests: ‘Do you think the protests are going to turn people to Donald Trump and vote for the Republicans?’
One of the two remote respondents was Benedict Spence, ostensibly a conservative but sufficiently house-trained to be a regular reviewer on Sky News. Sure enough, to remind viewers that he is a bone fide member of polite society, during his contribution Spence decried The Donald: ‘Trump is a reprehensible figure, he’s not particularly presidential, he’s said some pretty disgraceful things, he’s done some pretty disgraceful things.’
Spence also began from the premise that initially ‘there was some nobility in a lot of what these protesters were demanding’, though he did fret how ‘it’s been overtaken by some toe-rag behaviour’.
‘Toe-rag behaviour’ hardly does justice to the widespread and prolonged looting, arson, intimidation and thuggery, all committed in the name of Black Lives Matter and with the tacit approval of the Democratic Party. However, Spence surprisingly became more robust: ‘In these circumstances who are you going to back: the party which at the start of the protests stood with all protesters, regardless of what their actions were, and which facilitated a lot of this violence? Or are you going to stand with the man saying he is going to crack down on people being beaten up, people potentially dying, losing all their property . . .’
Before Spence could further outline why no responsible person should be endorsing the deranged Democratic Party and its street stormtroopers, the host interjected: ‘But he’s also accused of being the man driving the disparate groups and actually creating division in society. That’s the criticism that’s been levelled at President Trump, isn’t it?’
For the benefit of the prejudiced presenter, Benedict bullishly identified the much graver threat to societal harmony in the United States: ‘The great irony is that for the past four years everybody in liberal, progressive America has labelled Donald Trump a fascist. But right now, the people that [the Left] have enabled are the ones marching down streets, wearing black, hooded and masked, attacking the property of people they disagree with, forcing diners to perform their chosen salute – that sounds like fascism to me . . . from my perspective, sitting as a normal member of the public looking to see who is in the wrong, in the build-up to the election President Trump is saying a lot of the right things . . . (the host begins to interrupt) . . . and the Democrats are suddenly struggling . . .’
At which point the link from Chez Spence became inaudible as Gillian Joseph brusquely gave herself the final say: ‘In your opinion he’s saying a lot of the right things; others would beg to differ.’
Accepting the Party’s nomination at last week’s Republican National Convention, Trump’s key message was: ‘Your vote will decide whether we protect law-abiding Americans, or whether we give free rein to violent anarchists, agitators and criminals who threaten our citizens.’ Which he reiterated as: ‘This election will decide whether we defend the American way of life or whether we will allow a radical movement to completely dismantle and destroy it.’
Sky and other Leftist newsrooms will ‘beg to differ’; but as Benedict Spence underlined, it is not the incumbent President who is the domestic danger to American civilisation.
