Throughout the day on Tuesday, MSNBC sounded the alarm that President Trump’s planned rally in Phoenix, Arizona could lead to violence. Hour after hour, hosts, pundits, and correspondents hyped “concerns about people’s safety” and the “combustible situation” that was supposedly being created by the presidential visit.
In the 10 a.m. ET hour, anchor Hallie Jackson quoted a Washington Post op/ed from Democratic Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton warning that “America is hurting...largely because Trump has doused racial tensions with gasoline. With this planned visit to Phoenix, I fear the President may be looking to light a match.”
Later in the 11 a.m. ET hour, host Ali Velshi fretted to Arizona Republic reporter Ron Hansen: “Ron, what are you hearing from the community in Phoenix about the President’s rally and how it’s likely to be received?” Hansen proclaimed:
Well, I think there’s a fair bit of apprehension in the community today. There’s some sense that there’s a lot of anxiety after what happened in Charlottesville. And there’s concerns about what the President might say, especially with regard to former Sheriff Joe Arpaio and how people might react to that. There are concerns about people’s safety and I think that people are probably going to get through the day without any great incident but the fact that they don’t just know that is fairly troubling for them.
In the 12 p.m. ET hour, correspondent Garrett Haake promoted left-wing protests planned outside the rally: “A lot of immigration activists banning together to make sure that they bring a lot of folks out here tonight.” He predicted a possible violent showdown:
Want to give you a sense of what we’re looking at on the ground here and why so many people are nervous. You’ve got Trump supporters starting to line up by the dozens out here today....But if you’ve got 15 to 20,000 Trump supporters and maybe 10,000 or more counter-protesters who show up here tonight, those two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. And there’s a lot of concern that in the heat, the actual physical heat out here, over 100 degrees, and the rhetorical heat around this immigration issue, that you could have a pretty combustible situation here tonight.
Arguing that the left-wing protesters were planning peaceful demonstrations, Haake added: “The organizers of the protests have said they want this to look a lot more like Boston over the weekend.” In reality, the leftists in Boston actually assaulted numerous people.
Rather than try to ease tensions with calm, level-headed reporting about the event, the liberal resistance at MSNBC was instead spoiling for a fight with its sensational coverage.
The biased segments were brought to viewers by Febreze, Nissan, Gillette.
Here are excerpts of August 22 coverage:
10:54 AM ET
HALLIE JACKSON: The mayor of Phoenix is out with this new op-ed in The Washington Post today, he’s a Democrat, and he is saying that America is hurting, to your point Michael [Steele]. He says, “It is hurting largely because Trump has doused racial tensions with gasoline. With this planned visit to Phoenix, I fear the President may be looking to light a match.” He is still going to Phoenix. That is still happening. How do you see that playing out?
CATHERINE LUCEY [ASSOCIATED PRESS]: Well, and the question, I really think, is what’s he going to say there? Because we’re not clear. I mean, last night we saw – you talked earlier in the show about, you know, two different kinds of Trumps we see, scripted and unscripted. And last night saw him on Teleprompter, trying to offer this message, trying to put a capstone on it. But in front of a rally crowd, in front of an excited audience, we’ve seen –JACKSON: Supportive audience.
LUCEY: A supportive audience. We’ve seen how he goes when he goes off script. Is he going to talk about this? How is he going to talk about it? I really think that’s the big question going into this rally.
(...)
11:31 AM ET
ALI VELSHI: In Arizona, Republican Governor Doug Ducey will meet the President when he lands, but he won’t attend the rally. Nor will the state’s Republican Senators Jeff Flake and John McCain. For a deeper look at the President’s visit, I want to bring in Arizona Republic reporter and former resident of Charlottesville, Virginia, ironically, Ron Hansen. Ron, good to see you, thank you for joining us here. Ron, what are you hearing from the community in Phoenix about the President’s rally and how it’s likely to be received?
RON HANSEN [THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC]: Well, I think there’s a fair bit of apprehension in the community today. There’s some sense that there’s a lot of anxiety after what happened in Charlottesville. And there’s concerns about what the President might say, especially with regard to former Sheriff Joe Arpaio and how people might react to that. There are concerns about people’s safety and I think that people are probably going to get through the day without any great incident but the fact that they don’t just know that is fairly troubling for them.
(...)
12:32 PM ET
GARRETT HAAKE: A lot of immigration activists banning together to make sure that they bring a lot of folks out here tonight.
Want to give you a sense of what we’re looking at on the ground here and why so many people are nervous. You’ve got Trump supporters starting to line up by the dozens out here today, some of them I’ve talked to have been here since 2:00, 3:00 in the morning, they’re here overnight. The capacity in this room is something like 19,000 people.
The security folks here and the police, the Secret Service, have turned the area outside the convention center into sort of a fortress Phoenix. But if you’ve got 15 to 20,000 Trump supporters and maybe 10,000 or more counter-protesters who show up here tonight, those two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. And there’s a lot of concern that in the heat, the actual physical heat out here, over 100 degrees, and the rhetorical heat around this immigration issue, that you could have a pretty combustible situation here tonight.
The organizers of the protests have said they want this to look a lot more like Boston over the weekend. But I was in Boston over the weekend and you had in that case a fairly small event and an enormous counter-protest. That’s not going to be the case here tonight. So police and security folks really do have their work cut out for them tonight, even hours before the President arrives. The first protest is supposed to happen a few hours before the President gets here on site, essentially the time he lands here in Phoenix. So we’re watching a pretty combustible situation out here.
(...)
