FAKE NEWS: Newsweek Claims Ted Cruz Lied About Antifa Burning Down Cities.
Cruz’s comments came Monday on ABC’s The View, when he countered co-host Whoopi Goldberg’s attack on the right as violent: “Did I miss an entire year of Antifa riots where cities across this country were burning and police cars were being firebombed?”
Writer Tim Norton correctly noted Cruz was likely “referring to the protests that followed the death of George Floyd in 2020,” and the subsequent destruction of property in cities such as Minneapolis and then “Washington D.C., St Louis, Kansas City, Oregon, Atlanta, Seattle and New York City.”
He also correctly pointed out that “protests” (read: Antifa) “continued for 100 days” in Portland, Oregon, but things fell apart as he dismissed the demonstrations as “not typified by fires or arson” and therefore “[t]he majority of the Floyd protests” nationwide “took place between late May and early June 2020.”
Norton inadvertently undermined that claim by explaining “other violent, fiery clashes at other protests against police violence and racial injustice between 2020 and 2021” such as September 2020 rioting in Louisville, Kentucky and Brooklyn Center, Minnesota in April 2021.
The whiplash continued as he insisted Cruz was “significantly stretching the truth, even if taken figuratively” even though “many businesses were damaged or destroyed as a result of arson” because “Antifa is not a formalized group or association” and Black Lives Matter inspired global calls to action for racial justice. Really.
In other words, Antifa isn’t real and BLM protests made people feel special, so Cruz was…lying?
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Let’s unpack this schizophrenic gobbledygook. First, it was interesting Norton said Antifa wasn’t real seeing as how Newsweek tweeted this on November 2, 2020: “Antifa plans wave of demonstrations on streets as U.S. election polls close.”
And on April 24, 2021, Newsweek itself posted an article with the title: “Antifa Activists Vow to Keep Fighting—Even as ‘Terrorists’”.
At the beginning of 2009, Newsweek claimed, “We Are All Socialists Now.” Live look at the magazine dismissing Cruz’s statement:
