Former Obama adviser Van Jones and CNN talking head Abby Phillip attacked Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk on Monday for daring to suggest that racial animus may have been a factor in the savage Aug. 22 murder of a Ukrainian refugee in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The liberal chatterboxes’ eagerness to avoid the controversy over the murder becoming — as Phillip put it — “some sort of, like, reciprocal George Floyd situation” evidently had them overlook what the alleged murderer apparently says in the gruesome footage of the stabbing.
From avoidance to spin
The liberal media appeared keen to overlook 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska’s murder last month on the Lynx Blue Line in Charlotte, even in the wake of revelations about suspected killer Decarlos Brown’s lengthy criminal history and the release of footage showing the stabbing.
When the horrific story and the reaction to it online became too big to ignore, some outfits belatedly attempted to cure the narrative on Monday.
The New York Times, for instance, concern-mongered about the unprovoked stabbing turning into “an accelerant for conservative arguments about the perceived failings of Democratic policies,” suggesting it might be “successfully used” like Laken Riley’s murder by an illegal alien.
CNN, among the liberal outfits that delayed covering the murder, similarly attempted to orient the public’s focus away from what set the stage for Zarutska’s murder and toward political implications of the backlash.
RELATED: Wikipedia editors are trying to scrub the record clean of Iryna Zarutska’s slaughter by violent thug
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The eponymous host of “NewsNight with Abby Phillip” kicked off the panel discussion Monday evening stating that she was “trying to understand why this has become such a flashpoint on the right.”
Phillip, Van Jones, and other liberal panelists did not appear particularly receptive to the explanation offered early on by Republican strategist and commentator Brad Todd — that every murder is a tragedy but this one is particularly tragic because it was so avoidable.
“The man who committed this crime was out on cashless bail, which has been a crusade of the political left. He also has a repeat offender, career criminal, 14 times he was arrested,” said Todd. “He clearly is someone who should not have been out on bail in January when he was released on bail.”
Strategic deafness
After some of the panelists tried to center the conversation on the theme of mental illness, Phillip played a clip from Charlie Kirk where the conservative noted:
A white Ukrainian refugee was murdered just because she was white. Everybody knows that, obviously. … If a random white person simply walked up to and stabbed a nice, law-abiding black person for no reason, it would be an apocalyptically huge national story used to impose national, sweeping political changes on the whole country.
“Van, they’ve been looking for opportunities to make this some sort of, like, reciprocal George Floyd situation,” said Phillip. “And that’s the part that I think he’s almost giving away the game. It’s sad to see a lot of people going along with it.”
RELATED: Mainstream media turns a blind eye to vicious stabbing of young Ukrainian woman
Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Before suggesting that there were no “sweeping changes imposed on society” following the death of George Floyd, Jones first stated that “we don’t know why that man did what he did.”
“For Charlie Kirk to say, ‘We know he did it because she’s white,’ when there’s no evidence of that, is just pure race-mongering, hate-mongering. It’s wrong,” continued the former Obama adviser. “He should be ashamed of himself. No one mentioned the word ‘race,’ ‘white, ‘black,’ or anything except him.”
Contrary to Jones’ suggestion, the violent thug who murdered Zarutska, an aspiring veterinarian assistant, appears to repeatedly say in the video as blood dropped from his knife, “I got that white girl.”
Blaze News has reached out to Kirk for comment.
FBI Director Kash Patel indicated Monday evening that the “FBI has been investigating the Charlotte train murder from day one.”
Decarlos Brown has been charged with first-degree murder. Blaze News has reached out to the DOJ about whether Brown might face federal hate crime charges as well.
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