CNN came out of Vice President Mike Pence's speech at Fort McHenry on Wednesday night offering an angry rebuttal. Wolf Blitzer told Kaitlan Collins at the scene "it was so sad and so dangerous" to have Republicans attending this speech without masks.
Abby Phillip defended Biden: "Vice President Mike Pence said, you won't be safe in Joe Biden's America. A couple of lines earlier, he was talking about how reportedly, according to him, unsafe America's cities are in Donald Trump's America. This is Donald Trump's America that people are living in....I think it's really hard to square, Wolf." Anderson Cooper soon seconded that argument:
ANDERSON COOPER: Gloria, I mean, it is, you know, the point that Abby made I think is a really important one. The vice president saying, and, quote, "we will have law and order on the streets of America." Future tense. We will have it.
But this is Trump's America. I mean, he has been now in power -- it is as if the Vice President and the President, are talking as if they are just observers to what is going on, as if they are running to unseat the sitting president and vice president. They are the president -- this is the administration. This is their vision for America, and we're living in it. And they're saying we don't have law and order now. They say you won't be safe in Biden's America. But clearly, the portrait they are painting America right now is that you aren't safe in the suburbs, you aren't safe right now.
GLORIA BORGER: Well, they would, of course, make the point that you're not safe because it's Democratic Governors and Democratic mayors, but they're also making the point that COVID is over throughout this entire convention.
CNN will take both sides of this argument. If Trump and Pence call out lawlessness in the big cities, well, it's on their watch. But if Trump sends in federal security or law enforcement, that's horrific. See CNN's online news analysis from July 20 on events in Portland headlined "Trump's 'law and order' is starting to look like martial law."
This would explain why CNN anchor John Berman would just idly sit by that week and let Biden ally Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) rant and rave that federal security in Portland marks "the beginning of the ending of this democracy. That kind of activity is the activity of a police state, and this President, and this Attorney General seem to be doing everything they possibly can to impose Gestapo activities in local communities."
There was no fact check.
