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Minneapolis. New York. Washington. Philadelphia. Boston. Atlanta. Omaha. Los Angeles. Houston. Chicago.
The Daily Beast had reporters in all of those cities this week as the nation was convulsed by unrest over the murder of George Floyd. Night after night, the dispatches came in fast and furious as peaceful protests yielded to disturbing scenes: Minneapolis in flames, bat-wielding white vigilantes patrolling Philly's Fishtown, crowds attacking the CNN Center, NYPD cops using batons and an SUV against demonstrators, smash-and-grab gangs looting Manhattan, journalists arrested and assaulted, essential workers battered for breaking curfew—and non-violent marchers sprayed with smoke and tear gas to make way for an utterly pointless photo opportunity by President Trump.
It's so important to have eyewitnesses on the ground because of the sheer amount of misinformation, disinformation and obfuscation. Trumpworld insisted no tear-gas was used; the evidence shows otherwise. The president says antifa is fomenting violence; we found no reference to it in actual court documents. Law-enforcement officers turning the nation's capital into an armed camp wouldn't say where they were from; we found out. The NYPD said looters were stashing bricks in Brooklyn; our reporting questioned that. We broke down the insane hoaxes about Floyd's death, debunked the bogus #DCBlackout Twitter trend, put to rest rumor-mongering about violent plots against white people.
Meanwhile, our politics team was all over the Trump response to this coast-to-coast crisis. We brought you the audio of a call in which he told governors they would "look like a bunch of jerks" if they didn't crush the protest movement with mass arrests, told you how the Pentagon tried to distance itself from the self-proclaimed "president of law and order," and unveiled Team Trump's plan to smear Democrats "as the political party supporting riots and looting."
And, of course, our opinion team was Beasty AF, from Rick Wilson on Bunkergate, to Dmitry Gorenburg's red-pencil edit of Tom Cotton's New York Times op-ed, to Michael Tomasky's thoughtful column on civic empathy overcoming a thuggish presidency. If you have a few extra minutes, please read this piece by Adam Howard, sparked by the white friends reaching out to him for advice on what they could do. He writes, "White people, do the uncomfortable, right thing and clean house in your own hearts, your own homes and in your own community."
— Tracy Connor, Executive Editor
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