In the summer of 2020, violent rioters ransacked businesses, burned down police stations, and destroyed livelihoods in cities across the country.
But in the eyes of radical Wisconsin Democrat Senate candidate Mandela Barnes, the damage was worth it.
Here are seven times Barnes downplayed the violent riots:
- MAY 2020: Barnes tweeted “those who are protesting this injustice are doing so in order to save this nation, and they should be protected.”
- JUNE 2020: Barnes said “protest is necessary … how do you expect people to react?”
- JUNE 2020: Barnes suggested the riots weren’t actually ‘riots’ at all: “you can’t tell people how to be frustrated … more than damage, destruction, and rebellion, it is frustration.”
- AUGUST 2020: Barnes defended the riots as somehow a good thing: “in the wake of it all, you see community actually being built, and it is out of some of the most devastating set of circumstances that we often see community being built more holistically in a more inclusive way.”
- AUGUST 2020: Barnes said rioters were “trying to bring this country together.”
- SEPTEMBER 2020: Barnes called on people to “recognize…why people may get disruptive,” defending the riots as “a reckoning.”
- OCTOBER 2020: Barnes said the riots were merely an “uprising,” where people “stood up to demand justice.”
Considering Barnes wants to defund the police, abolish ICE, and release HALF of Wisconsin’s inmates, his justification of violence and destruction is wholly unsurprising. But it is indicative of the soft-on-crime posture of today’s Democrat Party, where woke politicians and far-left prosecutors have turned once-great cities into dens of lawlessness and chaos.
Wisconsinites and Americans need leaders who take public safety seriously — and that’s not Mandela Barnes.
