Fox News contributor Geraldo Rivera said Friday that the Louisville riots are showing how demonstrators are more concerned about adhering to political talking points than defending racial equality.
“It’s not whether you’re black or white, it’s that you have to toe a certain philosophical and political line,” Rivera told “Fox & Friends.” “If you toe the line then you can be black; if you don’t then you’re one of the others.”
Protests and riots broke out Wednesday in Louisville after a grand jury announced that one officer alone would be indicted on charges for the shooting death of Breonna Taylor.
Rivera noted Friday that when protesters sought “sanctuary” in a Louisville church, “they asked the white people to leave and then they asked the press to leave. They are fomenting racism or racialism in the defense of their rights. I think it’s very ironic to see the hypocrisy, the grotesque hypocrisy, of some of these protesters.” (RELATED: Daily Caller Reporters Arrested During Louisville Riot)
They found it “bitterly ironic” that the name of the other police office who was shot and is still hospitalized is not well known and has not been trumpeted by the media. “The cop who is still hospitalized happens to be a black officer, Robinson Desroches, who was hit —belly shot, right in the gut — right under his vest. Here’s a black officer shot, almost killed and where is his name?”
Rivera wondered why so few in the mainstream media are pointing out that despite all the the civil unrest supposedly being about racial injustice, a black cop was “viciously hit by a sniper who intended to kill him despite the fact that he was a black man.”
The Fox News contributor also pointed to the example of Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who defended the grand jury’s finding that indicted only one of the three police officers involved in the Taylor shooting for “wanton endangerment” and none for murder. (RELATED: Louisville Police Declare Unlawful Assembly, Multiple Fires Set)
A police officer takes aim at protesters shortly after shots are fired at police, resulting in two injured officers, on September 23, 2020 in Louisville, Kentucky. (Photo by Jon Cherry/Getty Images)
Rivera noted that Cameron has been called an “Uncle Tom” by some black activists who view his defense of the justice system as a betrayal.
“Louisville, last night was not as bad as Wednesday night,” Rivera concluded. “Hopefully there is a downward curve in terms of the emotions involved, but it’s still a tinderbox. People have to understand that not every tragedy is a crime.”