Shep Smith steps all over Fox News’ attempt to smear protesters at the G20 summit pic.twitter.com/VrshkzcRx3
— John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) July 6, 2017
Fox News’ Shepard Smith always speaks his mind. This would include the bluntest and most bittersweet of statements, along with sentiments that his network may not necessarily appreciate. And on Thursday, he took issue with his panelists’ continued insistence that the protests occurring in Hamburg, Germany should be referred to as “riots.”
Certainly, there are police in riot gear amid the chaos, and they’ve deployed water cannons to disperse the demonstrators. Some pockets of violence have indeed occurred with injuries to officers and protesters being reported, but in the video clip that was being discussed, there was virtually zero violence at hand. In fact, the panelists mainly discussed the anti-capitalist (“anti-money … they just wanna go back to bartering, or not even bartering … making stuff and giving it to each other”) nature of the gatherings.
Of course, Smith did acknowledge that some isolated “skirmishes” were occurring during these demonstrations. He simply didn’t think it was fair to describe these events as riots, especially the live feed that he and the panelists were observing: “I think we’ve all been watching this together … I’ve been involved in covering riots. This is not a riot … these are protests.”
FYI, these protests happened to be occurring while a hotel-less President Trump arrived in Hamburg to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel). However (and unlike what some outlets are reporting), there’s no real indication that these protests revolve around Trump at all. In fact, these demonstrations are an annual occurrence, which is one reason why the police are out in full force to ward off any trouble. Yet as Smith notes at the end of this clip, “The rioting is just not happening.”
(Via Fox News)