Ingraham: Minneapolis burning
Bad actors threw gasoline on the fire and suddenly the 'justice for all' message of peaceful George Floyd protests is obliterated.
Laura Ingraham opened Thursday night's edition of "The Ingraham Angle" by responding to the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, saying they had engaged in "outrageous and even perhaps murderous behavior" and calling the death of another African-American in police custody "infuriating and heartbreaking."
"It is hard for people to watch it [the video] at all," she said. "I was thinking today, this means a lot of things, but it means many young African-Americans and many of them just starting out in their lives, end up thinking once again that our criminal justice system is not just rigged against them, it is targeting them.
"President Trump was right to jump on this situation almost immediately, directing the DOJ [and] FBI to launch a civil rights investigation into the matter."
Earlier Thursday, Trump instructed the bureau to take a "very strong look" at the circumstances surrounding Floyd's death.
Ingraham said that there should be no public tolerance for -- or expectation of -- anything but fair conduct by America's police.
"No one in America should feel like he or she is being treated unfairly by law enforcement because of skin color or any other characteristic, for that matter," she said. "Tolerating anything but equal justice under the law and due process is simply unacceptable.
"In the year 2020, it is fairly obvious that we need to ensure there is more protection for civil liberties across the board," Ingraham went on, "for criminal suspects held by authorities, and for protesters, whether they're in Minnesota or in Michigan."
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However, the host said that the violence that followed Floyd's death -- in which stores were looted and property was set ablaze -- is also inexcusable.
"Bad actors threw gasoline on the fire, figuratively and literally, and suddenly, the message of 'justice for all' is not only lost, it is obliterated," she said.
"[E]xcusing criminal behavior as somehow justified when it is carried out in response to police brutality or any other abuse only ends up making a bad situation worse," she continued. "Because it lowers the bar for everybody. It is frankly patronizing and even demeaning and it hurts more innocent people in the community in the process."
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"America isn't hopeless. She's not irredeemable," Ingraham concluded. "The overwhelming majority of Americans just want to live in peace and they want to live in harmony with their neighbors of all races and all ethnicities. Most Americans are good people. Most police officers want to help, not hurt.
"Time and again, we see that the real change agents in America are those who stay in their communities and build them up, not burn them down."
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