This is incredible. It's truly outrageous. But we've been programmed to care more about Skip Bayless' harmless tweets than a president lying about the death of a police officer. https://t.co/686OG9NkKM
— Jason Whitlock (@WhitlockJason) January 6, 2023
Beginning at 15:45 of the YouTube video below, President Biden can be seen stating
Today is a ceremony to honor the heroes of January 6. We also recognize the late U.S. Capitol police officer Billy Evans. His family is with us today.
Three months after January 6 while they were still cordoning off the Capitol because of threats by these sick insurrectionists continuing to be profligated (sic) on the Internet- again, all America saw when Officer Evans was killed defending the checkpoint it had to go through to get up to the Capitol because of the Godawful sick threats that continue to move forward. The whole world saw it. It's just hard to believe. It's hard to believe it could happen here in America.
There is no reason to believe that more than a handful of the insurrections were "sick." Inconveniently, however, Billy Evans was no insurrectionist, possibly not even a right-winger. The Philadelphia Inquirer at the time reported
A Capitol Police officer killed last week when a man armed with a knife rammed his car into two officers at a barricade outside the Capitol does not appear to have been stabbed, slashed or shot, a police official told The Associated Press on Monday.
Officer William “Billy” Evans, an 18-year veteran of the force, died Friday after the driver rammed into the barricade near the Capitol. The driver, identified as 25-year-old Noah Green, crashed into the officers and the barrier, then exited the car armed with a knife and lunged at the officers before police fatally shot him, authorities said....
Investigators are increasingly focused on Green’s mental health as they work to identify any motive for the attack, a U.S. official briefed on the investigation told the AP. Investigators have learned the suspect had been suffering from delusions, paranoia and suicidal thoughts, according to the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about an ongoing matter and spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity.
In online posts since removed, Green described being under government thought control and said he was being watched. He described himself as a follower of the Nation of Islam and its longtime leader, Louis Farrakhan, and spoke of going through a difficult time when he leaned on his faith. Some of the messages were captured by the group SITE, which tracks online activity.
President Biden did not lie. He did not explicitly claim that Officer Evans was killed because of the "threats by these sick insurrectionists." But he linked the attempted coup more closely than justified- or reasonable- to the murder while reference to "these insurrectionists" strongly implied that the culprit was one of the insurrectionists of 1/6/01.
"It's hard to believe it could happen in America," Biden remarked, thereby in that portion of the event honoring Evans clearly referring to the insurrection.
It would have been factual and not misleading to say Evans "was killed defending the checkpoint it had to go through to get up to the Capitol because of the Godawful sick threats that continue to move forward." Nonetheless, the rest of the comment was unnecessary and misleading.
In charging that Biden's remark was "incredible" and "truly outrageous," Jason Whitlock evidently believes that the President was trying to paint a false portrait of the murder. As is almost universally known and understood, the coup plotters and its participants were overwhelmingly white and right-wing. By contrast, Noah Green was a black man who may have been mentally ill or disturbed and was a follower of the Nation of Islam.
We didn't need Joe Biden to describe the apparent killer. We also didn't need him to try to sell this guy as someone associated with the insurrectionists of January 6, 2021. The comments were reprehensible.
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