Last night, there were people shot during a riot in Kenosha. If I were a reporter for the mainstream media, I would have said that "peaceful protesters" where shot by "armed White men" in Kenosha. But like so much else these days, there are videos of the event that one can watch online to see -- at least from the perspective of the person taking the video -- what actually happened. I know, because I watched them.
It seems that there were some rather loud "protests" by people, many of whom were armed with guns. The protesters were clearly NOT peaceful. They were throwing rocks and other things at police. They were breaking windows on cars as well. That is all I could see in the videos, but reports also say they were setting fires. Police in armored vehicles told the crowd to disperse and were ignored. They then used tear gas. That sets the scene.
Next, the "protesters" came upon a gas station where there were a group of heavily armed men guarding the facility. These were not police. Nor were they all white. These crowd confronted the armed men who told them to stay away from the gas station. Some of the armed "protesters" came forward and stood confronting the guard of the gas station.
The next video shows an armed man running. He appears to be running from the crowd, but it's hard to tell. Suddenly, he goes down. On the video, it looks like he got shot, but one can't tell for certain. He rolls over, grabs his weapon and fires a few shots. One cannot see if he hit anyone.
Reports say that three "protesters" were shot. These reports connect those shot to the guy on the ground who fired back after he fell.
If you read the media, this was an unprovoked attack on the protesters. If you watch the videos, that is obviously not true. The guy on the ground clearly was either shot and was firing back in his own defense, or he thought he was about to get beaten and was firing in his own defense, or he was neither shot nor in personal danger and he was shooting at the mob because he was a racist or a white supremacist or someone just looking to stir up further trouble. There's no way to know for sure at the moment, but it certainly looks from the video like the first alternative (firing back in his own defense) is the reason.
Once the police catch the guy on the ground, we will know much more. For example, was he shot? That would go a long way towards proving that one of the "peaceful protesters" shot him to start the melee. We need to hear his side of the story.
Meanwhile, all this mess plays out on TV's. In Wisconsin, it obviously gets maximum coverage; you can be sure that those videos have appeared on local TV all across the state. Not even media bias could keep these videos off the air.
So what is the reaction to the riots in Kenosha? The other day, I wrote that these riots are likely moving Wisconsin into the Trump column in November. Today, a poll came out that ought to make the Democrats with their support of the rioters very nervous. The poll is of likely Wisconsin voters and was taken during the period immediately after the Democrats convention and just prior to the events in Kenosha. The poll shows Trump up by 1% over Biden in Wisconsin.
There are other recent polls in Wisconsin that show Biden ahead, but the trend among all polls in that state has been moving in Trump's favor. We will have to wait for a few weeks to see how the RNC and the events in Kenosha move the voters, but I think that Wisconsin has been lost to Biden in November.
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