However, as Benjamin Strick of The BBC reported on Tuesday, the bricks were clearly visible at the same spot in video posted on YouTube on May 24, one day before the killing of George Floyd. Lael argued that it was important to him “to protect the young protesters” and “kind of keep the narrative clear” by at least letting the young man who suspected the bricks might have been a set-up make it plain that he was not a rioter and not interested in violence.Īnother clip used by the White House, and “Inside Edition,” shows a pile of bricks in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in video that was posted on Twitter on Saturday.
“America is vulnerable and on the radar of people who want to destroy the country,” he said. In an interview, the man who recorded this video and posted it online, Reuben Lael, told me that he took the threat of “interlopers,” meaning “anarchists or any other anti-America groups,” using violence to distort the meaning of the Black Lives Matter protests very seriously. Photographs and video shot on May 5 at the same location, outside the Dallas County Courthouse - during a protest by the far-right Oathkeepers in support of Shelley Luther, a salon owner who was jailed for reopening her business during the coronavirus lockdown - showed that there were extensive roadworks and piles of bricks at that same street corner three weeks before George Floyd was killed.Įven if the roadwork had been largely or entirely completed by last Saturday, it seems far more likely that the bricks had just not been cleared away than that they were removed and then planted again, outside a courthouse, by left-wing agitators. In the background, another protester can be heard saying, “there ain’t no damned construction around here.” “You got to do better,” the man adds, wagging his finger in a sarcastic scolding of the slipshod provocateurs he imagines were responsible. “This is a set-up,” the young man says to the camera in the original video, which was posted on Twitter by a black activist. #setup #BlackLivesMatters #makeblackcount /CULGXPzMun
But I was very disappointed to see this RANDOM stack of bricks in front of the courthouse. In the first clip, recorded in Dallas on Saturday night, a young black protester addresses the camera, and shares the conspiratorial idea that a pallet of bricks outside a courthouse must have been planted there to provoke a riot. However, as open-source investigators for BBC News, Buzzfeed and Vice had already reported before the White House compiled the clips, almost all of the video included in it showed ordinary piles of bricks used in construction projects which were underway before the wave of protests began in response to the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by Minneapolis police officers last week. Read Our Complete Coverage Protests for Black Lives “There is speculation they may have been planted there by Antifa, for use as projectiles aimed at cops and storefront windows.” “Piles of bricks have also appeared at the scenes of major demonstrations,” a reporter for the tabloid news show added. Three of the clips were broadcast a day earlier in a report from “Inside Edition,” which told its viewers that “police say small bands of the so-called ‘professional agitators’ are taking advantage of the crisis and hijacking peaceful demonstrations.”
The compilation includes seven clips showing bricks, rocks or paving stones that the people who filmed them found suspicious. The video is worth examining in detail, since it shows just how unconcerned with the truth people in the White House are, as they conduct a frantic search for evidence to support the president’s baseless claim that the protests over racial injustice and police impunity have been hijacked by phantom “professional protesters.” A screenshot showing that a video was removed from the White House Facebook feed on Wednesday.Īlthough the White House tried to hide the video once it became clear just how riddled with errors it was, The Intercept saved a copy before it disappeared.
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