Former first lady Michelle Obama described months of protests as part of an “overwhelmingly peaceful movement for racial solidarity” in a video released Tuesday by the Joe Biden presidential campaign.
Obama did not specifically identify Black Lives Matter or Antifa when describing “demonstrations” as mostly non-violent. President Donald Trump’s characterization of riots as violent is “patently false” and “racist,” she claimed:
It is frustrating to hear some folks say that you’ve been the beneficiary of privilege, that the color of your skin gives you a head start. That is the reality for far too many hard-working decent Americans, but right now, the president and his allies are trying to tap into that frustration and distract from his breathtaking failures by giving folks someone to blame other than them.
They’re stoking fears about black and brown Americans, lying about how minorities will destroy the suburbs, whipping up violence and intimidation, and they’re pinning it all on what’s been an overwhelmingly peaceful movement for racial solidarity.
It’s true. Research backs it up. Only a tiny fraction of demonstrations have had any violence at all. So what the president is doing is, once again, patently false. It’s morally wrong, and yes, it is racist.”
WATCH (relevant portion begins at 13:15):
Breitbart News reported in September on data from Princeton University identifying riots linked to the Black Lives Matter campaign occurring in 48 of America’s 50 largest cities. Biden, Democrats, and left-wing news media regularly blame Trump for violence and criminality executed by Antifa and Black Lives Matter.
In July, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) dismissed the leftist-driven violent riots in Portland as “a myth.”
Obama urged undecided voters to extend “empathy” to Americans whose ancestors were enslaved as part of her political pitch for Biden’s campaign:
As a black woman who has, like the overwhelming majority of people of color in this nation, done everything in my power to live a life of dignity and service and honesty, the knowledge that any of my fellow Americans is more afraid of me than the chaos we are living through right now, well, that hurts. It hurts us all. It is a heaviness that sits on our hearts. So I want to appeal for some empathy here, too. I want everyone who is still undecided to think about all those folks like me and my ancestors, the moms and dads who worked their fingers to the bone to raise their kids right, the teenagers who wear hoodies while working hard to get their diplomas, the millions of folks who look like me and fought and died and toiled as slaves and soldiers and laborers to help build this country.
Put yourselves in our shoes for just a moment. Imagine how it feels to wake up every day and do your very best to uphold the values that this country claims to hold dear — truth, honor, decency — only to have those efforts met by scorn, not just by your fellow citizens, but by a sitting president.
Imagine how it feels to have suspicion cast on you from the day you were born simply because of the hue of your skin, to walk around your own country scared that someone’s unjustified fear of you could put you in harm’s way, terrified of what four more years of this kind of division might mean for the safety of you and those you love, living with the knowledge that no matter how hard we try — how much good we do in the world — there will be far too many who will never see our humanity, who will project on us their own fears of retribution for centuries of injustice and thus only see us as a threat to be restrained.
Obama urged viewers to vote for Biden in order to implement “mandatory mask-wearing” across America as a measure to address the coronavirus outbreak.
“[Joe Biden] will start by getting this virus under control, working with a broad coalition of leaders to develop a national strategy that will include mandatory mass wearing and free testing,” Obama stated.
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