‘There Wasn’t Violence. There Wasn’t Bloodshed’: MSNBC Whitewashes Al Sharpton’s History

When you think of nonviolent protests, you may not think of Al Sharpton — but MSNBC does.

An MSNBC host praised the controversial racial crusader for holding demonstrations devoid of “violence” or “bloodshed” and for maintaining a “great” relationship with the New York City Police Department.

Joe Scarborough complimented Sharpton, who was a panelist on Friday’s episode of “Morning Joe.”

Scarborough began by highlighting the comments of Hawk Newsome (whose given name is Walter), the leader of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York. Newsome cautioned New York City Mayor-elect Eric Adams against reactivating a plainclothes police unit to crack down on gun violence. “If they think they are going back to the old ways of policing then we’re going to take to the streets again,” Newsome threatened. “There will be riots. There will be fire, and there will be bloodshed.”

“You know, Rev, obviously people can disagree,” said Scarborough, who has expressed his admiration of Adams. But, the host told Sharpton, Newsome’s approach is “obviously not the way to do things and not the way you do things.”

“You disagree, but you would sit down and talk; you would find middle ground. And there wasn’t violence. There wasn’t bloodshed,” Scarborough asserted of Sharpton’s decades of agitation in the Big Apple.

In reality, Al Sharpton played a pivotal role in the 1991 Crown Heights riots, which one historian described as “the most serious anti-Semitic incident in American history.”

Sharpton helped heat the cauldron of black-Jewish relations days earlier, after City College of New York Black Studies professor Leonard Jeffries claimed that “rich Jews” ran the transatlantic slave trade, and “Russian Jewry … and their financial partners, the Mafia, put together a system of destruction of black people.” When asked about the comments, Sharpton came to Jeffries’ aid. “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house,” Sharpton defended offensively.

Then came Crown Heights. On August 19, 1991, a car in the detail of the late Rabbi Menachem Schneerson struck two young black children, killing 7-year-old Gavin Cato. As the neighborhood rioted, many chanted, “Kill the Jew!” A group of up to 30 people surrounded a rabbinical student from Australia named Yankel Rosenbaum, stabbed him four times, and fractured his skull. He died after hospital staff missed one of his wounds.

The next day, Al Sharpton ignored the wishes of then-New York City Mayor David Dinkins (D), stirring up a crowd that marched through the streets of

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