Posted on January 8, 2021

Biden Said Black Lives Matter Protesters Would Have Been Treated “Very Differently” Than the Trump Mob

Matt Berman, BuzzFeed, January 7, 2021

President-elect Joe Biden said Thursday that he believed Black Lives Matter protesters would have been met with a much hasher police response than the mob of Trump supporters who rioted and looted inside the US Capitol on Wednesday.

Biden said his granddaughter had sent him a picture as rioters swept through the Capitol of armed security lining the Lincoln Memorial during an earlier Black Lives Matter protest.

“She said, ‘Pop, this isn’t fair. No one can tell me if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn’t have been treated very, very differently than the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol,'” Biden said. “We all know that’s true. And it is unacceptable. Totally unacceptable.”

Biden was not the first to make the comparison. Black Lives Matter activists told BuzzFeed News on Wednesday that they saw a double standard in how they were treated at nonviolent protests relative to the rioters, who in some cases appeared to meet little resistance as they breached the Capitol.

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Biden also insisted Thursday that the mob be referred to as something other than “protesters.”

“They weren’t protesters,” Biden said. “Don’t dare call them protesters. They were a riotous mob, insurrectionists, domestic terrorists.”

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