MSNBC political contributor and Morgan State University professor Jason Johnson said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” that there was no comparison between Black Lives Matter protesters and so-called “armed insurrectionists” at the January 6 Capitol riot.
Johnson was addressing Republicans, suggesting the bipartisan commission should also investigate the events of January 6 to include riots that took place last summer in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
Johnson said, “I don’t know why the Democrats are even bothering to try and make a bipartisan commission at this point. The Republicans know that many of them are potentially complicit either in not standing up when this was happening or obfuscating people who might be involved. I keep going back to the congresswoman who said at the very beginning. I’m fairly confident I saw people giving tours to folks who showed up later as insurrectionists. The Republican Party doesn’t want a real investigation. This is like the Empire saying, OK, you got the Death Star. We don’t have to do the whole investigation into Darth Vader. You can’t go forward. The country can’t go forward unless we have an investigation. I promise you, whoever was responsible for this and the people in Congress who were responsible for this will try again at some point. I think the Democrats just need to go it alone and forget about getting Republicans involved.”
He added, “The whole idea of comparing what happened on January 6 to last summer — it doesn’t make any sense one way or the other. You saw more arrests at peaceful protests in Louisville after Breonna Taylor was killed than you saw during the insurrection. It took like months before the insurrection got to 400 arrests. There’s a huge difference between your youth pastor with a Black Lives Matter sign in the middle of a Target parking lot and a bunch of people with guns and weapons beating and abusing police officers to go take over the United States of America.”
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