Media Dismiss A Literal Political Assassination Attempt Because It Doesn’t Fit Their Narrative

Quintez Brown, a 21-year-old Black Lives Matter activist, allegedly marched into the office of Louisville, Ky., mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg on Valentine’s Day and opened fire, sending a bullet through Greenberg’s clothing before fleeing the scene. Despite the story’s shock value, corporate media can’t be bothered to do much reporting on the story — and we all know exactly why.

Despite Brown’s history as a BLM activist and his flirtation with black nationalism on social media, most media outlets have shrugged off his motive for the shooting with a “who knows?” or even tried to pin it on Republicans. Brown was also a vocal gun-control advocate and was interviewed by Joy Reid on MSNBC at an anti-gun march in 2018.

The Las Vegas Sun completely whitewashed Brown’s far-left associations, asininely writing that “While there’s been no indication yet that the activist had ties to any right-wing organizations, the shooting comes amid a rise in threats against politicians fueled by increasingly violent rhetoric coming from extremist Republicans.” After backlash, the Sun tweaked the sentence to admit, “[I]t’s been reported that the activist was involved in the Black Lives Matter and gun-safety movements” — but still followed the line with the original sentence in its entirety rather than issuing a correction.

ABC simply called Brown a “social justice activist,” and after the local BLM chapter helped bail him out, David Muir vaguely referred to the group as a “community organization.”

The New York Times wrote one single article on the shooting, as of Friday morning, but nowhere is any language of assassination. In contrast, federal prosecutors freely slandered the rioters on Jan. 6, 2021, as planning to assassinate officials, a claim corporate media happily parroted until the feds walked it back from lack of evidence.

The Washington Post also deigned to publish only one write-up on the Louisville incident, likewise avoiding any language of assassination and merely referring to Brown’s checkered activist past as having “previously worked with violence prevention groups” and “participated in racial justice protests in 2020.” Neither paper referred to Brown’s alleged crime as any sort of terrorism, even though the left has liberally doused Republicans, down to parents at school board meetings, with the incendiary term.

It’s easy to imagine how outraged the headlines would be if the shooter were a Republican. “Trumpist White Supremacist Domestic Terrorist Assassination Attempt Shows Dangers of Republican Rhetoric, Need for DOJ Hate Crimes Investigation” would be splattered across every page (shoot, the Las Vegas Sun is practically writing that anyway!). When a troubled high schooler tragically shot and killed classmates at his school in Michigan, news outlets were quick to dig up his mom’s pro-Trump blog posts.

But in Brown’s case, even though we know his history as a BLM and gun-control activist, the corporate press is signaling that his motive is either unknown or just not all that relevant (when they mention the story at all). And it’s not the first time leftist outlets have memory-holed a sensationally horrifying story because the attacker’s motive or background was politically inconvenient.

Just two months ago, when a radical who had repeatedly called for violence against white people drove his truck through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wis., killing six people, the press corps quickly downplayed or buried not just the suspect’s problematic past but the story itself. Many blamed it on the “car” while MSNBC analyst Clint Watts went so far as to call the attack an “accident.”

In April 2021, when Noah Green — a devout follower of Louis Farrakhan’s antisemitic, black nationalist group, the Nation of Islam — rammed into barriers at the U.S. Capitol armed with a knife and murdered Capitol Police officer Billy Evans, the media cabal couldn’t be bothered either. “Green’s motives are not entirely clear,” The Hill said. “The suspect’s motive isn’t known, but he posted on social media about his struggles during the pandemic,” wrote The New York Times.

Although Green murdered a Capitol Police officer — unlike anyone on Jan. 6 — his act was quickly scuttled by media while the events of Jan. 6 were hysterically broadcast as acts of terrorism and insurrection. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker even issued a commemorative statement on the one-year anniversary of Jan. 6 mistakenly blaming Trump supporters for Evans’ death.

And when Bernie bro James Hodgkinson shot up a baseball game of Republican congressmen in 2017, corporate media either blamed Trump or insisted we all share some of the blame. Even though Hodgkinson was part of Facebook groups like “Terminate the Republican Party” and had written “It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co” on his own page, talking heads concluded that his violence was incited not by their own anti-Trump vitriol but “leaders and political commentators who set an example” that “led us into an abyss of violent rhetoric.”

“Any debate about civility in politics begins with Trump,” was New York Times political reporter Glenn Thrush’s very bad take.

After a neighbor assaulted Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul in 2018 while he was mowing his lawn, breaking five ribs and forcing the senator to undergo surgery to remove part of his lung, blue checkmarks on Twitter flippantly cheered the attempt, with Nancy Pelosi’s daughter going so far as the say the assailant was “right.”

Not only are leftists’ double standards apparent in the reality-defying theatrics they’re pulling to escape association with the Louisville would-be assassin, they are also visible in the efforts to post bail for the shooter.

When donors tried to crowdsource funds to post the outrageously high $2 million bail set for Kyle Rittenhouse, a teenager who has since been acquitted of all charges after shooting multiple people in self-defense, leftist platform GoFundMe shut down the fundraising campaigns. GoFundMe also neutralized the fundraising campaign for Canadian truckers protesting their government’s Covid mandates, and after the group’s efforts to fundraise on another platform were hacked, media gleefully doxxed and shamed private donors whose information was posted online.

But in Brown’s case, with a bail set at one-twentieth of Rittenhouse’s bail, Black Lives Matter Louisville and the Louisville Community Bail Fund helped Brown post his $100,000 bail on Wednesday, two days after the shooting. CNN’s Rex Chapman has repeatedly fundraised for the two groups — but don’t hold your breath waiting for Chapman to face doxxing or cancellation over his support for an attempted murder suspect.

Elle Reynolds is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.

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