The Daily Signal - INTERVIEW | Julio Rosas' 2020 Riot Coverage Changed How Americans View Journalism

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

Julio Rosas, senior writer for Townhall and the author of "Fiery but Mostly Peaceful: The 2020 Riots and the Gaslighting of America," joined me at the Turning Point Action Conference in Palm Beach, Florida, to delve into the rise of citizen journalism and the necessity of wading into the most dangerous situations to expose the worst behavior—even if that means filming the riots from inside the raging crowds. When CNN, MSNBC, and other left-leaning outlets cherry-picked their coverage of the 2020 riots, Rosas stepped in to broadcast them open and unedited—even if that meant stepping in harm’s way: The political and media ecosphere said [the riots] weren’t an issue, that ‘you’re just exaggerating, it’s a mostly peaceful protest, we aren’t grooming kids.’ Now we can respond, ‘What are you talking about? I know this is happening because I’m seeing it firsthand.’ Rosas thinks that seeing footage of riots and school board meetings encouraged more Americans to become politically active. “It’s going to motivate people to get more involved—I think we’ve seen more of a reaction to everything, and [riots and public schools] are just two issues," he said. In this episode of “The Daily Signal Podcast,” Rosas outlines what changed in American society after people were shown footage of progressive activism that legacy media had previously ignored. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for July 21st, 2023. I'm Tony Kennett. Julio Rosas, senior writer for Townhall.com and the author of Fiery but Mostly Peaceful, the 2020 riots and the gaslighting of America, joined me at the Turning Point Action Conference in Palm Beach, Florida, to delve into the rise of citizen journalism and the necessity of wading into the most dangerous situations to expose the worst behavior. Stay tuned for today's show after this. We get it. With big media bias, it's hard to find out. accurate honest news. That's why we've put together the Morning Bell newsletter, a compilation of the

top stories and conservative commentary. To subscribe, just head to DailySignal.com slash morning bell subscription or visit DailySignal.com and click on the connect button at the top of the page. I'm Tony Kennett here with the guy that really doesn't need introduction, especially after the chaos of the last couple of years. Julio Rosas, did you like that? Yeah, no, I would say thank you. Thank you for, thank you for, for instead of a land acknowledgement, we decided to do a heritage acknowledgement. So you have to say the individual's name and just the thickest accent that you can dive into. Not, not to do it to point of parity, but yes, yeah, absolutely. We'll talk afterwards. Yeah. So I feel like, look, walking around this conference that there are a lot of people who didn't

really start following politics, who didn't start following the conservative movement, until they started seeing the kind of things that we were covering. I mean, have you found a lot of people through a lot of you're diving into the riots from Antifa, from BLM, that said, you know, I really didn't care about this until I saw you in the thick of it. Well, and it's not even just that, but it's also kind of hard. See, it's, for certain issues, it's easy to not see the effects of it, right? When you look at, like, Russian collusion, okay, you know, it's like this, you know, not abstract, but like to the average American, it's like, you know, okay,

like, obviously that's an issue, but it doesn't affect me day to day. But when you have your neighborhood being looted and set on fire, I mean, that's in your face, right? And that's why we've seen with the parents being more involved at school boards and everything, it's because that's their kid that are being subjected to it. So when you have that, and then on top of that, you see the rest of the political and media ecosphere saying, that's not an issue, or like, you're exaggerating. That, you know, like, it's a mostly peaceful protest. They're like, no, we're not grooming kids.

People are going to say, what, no, like, what are you talking about? Like, I know this because I'm seeing it firsthand. And so you're right, it's going to motivate people to get more involved. And that's why I think we've seen more of a reaction to everything. And that's just two issues. Right. Well, it's also harder to ignore. So when you see like a Washington Post headline and they're like, the world is collapsing,

everything's terrible, it's kind of easy to go, okay, well, that's super duper. But when you see video of chairs being thrown through windows and things on fire, and again, think of the CNN reporter meme, you know, fiery but mostly peaceful protest, it really does put some of that stuff into perspective. When you see school board candidates or school board members being read excerpts from these pornographic books and they're uncomfortable, but like that's the content, it's so hard to ignore. And I feel like that's the kind of reporting that we need more of, which is you can't ignore this. Here's the evidence. here's where it's happening. This isn't just from some pundits chair. Yeah, right. Yeah. It's dudes and ladies getting in the thick of it so that the rest of America, the coastals and the middle Americans, can actually see what's going on in the real world.

And that's why it's so, I don't want to say, I would say it's very invigorating to for this, because you're right when we have, and then not even just that, but also like things like inflation. and we have things like with like the housing market being the way it is and no one can afford to buy a home. I mean, like these are things that really are affecting people day to day. And for me, my focus has been, you're right, like this isn't punditry. And that's why I strive for, I don't say I don't do analysis, but I strive for on the ground reporting. Yeah. Because it's, because I'm not trying to base my whole thing, again, like with Russian, you know, Russian collusion, Russian.

Like, oh, yeah, anonymous sources from the intel community say this. It's like, here's a video of just absolute chaos. I'm here downtown. Everything is on fire. Draw your own conclusions. Right, exactly. And so today, when I focus a lot of my reporting, it's the long-term effects of a high-intensity breakdown of an order. Right now, we're facing a low-intensity breakdown because now it's no longer necessarily people looting.

You go to Philadelphia, and there's an entire street. It's just filled with drugged out zombies, right? And that's not to denigrate them. That's what... Well, that's what people on the streets of Philadelphia are dealing with. I was just there, walking through those streets. It's horrible. Exactly.

The citizens of Philadelphia don't want to be dealing with that? No. And so I know that there's kind of a conservative stance to just be like, well, they voted for it, so they have to suffer the consequences. And I agree with that up to a point. And I say that because there's a lot of people that get caught in the crossfire of those bad policies, because, for example, in Washington, D.C., more juveniles have been shot so far this year than were shot in total for last year in 2022. And so we're only six months into this, or six, seven months into this year.

Wow. And we're already, they're already past that point. And so obviously the kids didn't vote for that. And unfortunately, there's, you know, probably some kids who were involved in some of that. But there's so many innocent people that are caught in the crossfire. So that's why when I'm bringing attention to this is to say, like hey no like things are as bad as as you think it is because like again you're seeing it I mean when you get carjacked by a 14 year old you're like you have to pause and think wait hold on this is this is how things use

it's something different entirely and also I considered going back to the george floyd protest when there was that fireman-owned restaurant who the dude just all we wanted to do was save up enough money to build this restaurant took him like 20 years to save up the money to do so and it's just like a neighborhood restaurant you know it was kind of a local favorite and they they being the BLM rioters absolutely destroyed that restaurant. And it's not something you're going to hear because it's not exactly newsworthy to talk about, oh, just some local guys restaurant. But when you're an individual out there in middle America who's like, I have places that I go to like that, this is what that kind of chaos does to those places, changes things for you. Because it's not just some congressman lecturing from the campaign trail. No. All right? You're not going to see some congressmen going out and doing the fake Lincoln Day dinner. I'm here at the state fair and I've got a

corn dog supreme. You're like, no, you don't have that. Actually, it's real people. Exactly. Yeah, the fake bite right in there. But you actually have real on the ground reporting that shows people things that they're actually concerned about. Not some preening and posture. Because, I mean, when you're out there and you're in the middle of a riot

and a mob, are you preening and posturing for everybody? No. No, it's, again, it's just like, and that's why I never did so many stand-ups you know, or the camera's on me. I did it a few times, but 90% of my video is just... The camera's facing out. It's facing outward because people aren't tuning in to see me necessarily.

They're tuning in to see what I'm showing. And I took that very, very seriously. And it's the same thing with what's happening at the border, or what has been happening at the border since this administration. Again, it's just showing people just crossing in the middle of the day without any fear looking for Border Patrol because they know they're going to be released later on. on right out because that's how things are but so it it's it really puts things in perspective when again you see the because I mean we all have this nostalgia right

I mean everyone has this nostalgia but I mean things were this things weren't like this just like in terms of nationwide just back in 2019 I mean which is amazing we're not even talking about like 20 years ago yeah exactly you don't have to go back to 20 30 years ago to reach points where I bring this up all the time imagine telling someone five years ago that we would be talking about transgender children. And like those kind of surgeries with children, like people would laugh at you, were you to bring those kind of things up? It would be considered the most absurd form of comedy.

And yet it's become the norm now. And so, you know, as we kind of move forward and we took to take a look at this kind of reporting, it's necessary to showcase how bad it is on the ground. So people see such a stark contrast from what was like you said just back in 2019. And it's, I, and I, it was funny because during, during, during, that time, I never, I was thinking about the long-term implications, and I was, you know, thinking about, okay, well, crime, obviously, but there's so many secondary and third effects. And we don't even have to look at the recent riots.

I mean, we look at Newark in Detroit. Right. From what happened after their riots in the 60s. I mean, I'm not saying that that's the only reason why they are in the state that they're in today. No, but those actions have serious consequences. Yeah, it certainly didn't help their future economic prosperity. Wait a minute.

You're saying that riots don't help the city they happen in? What a surprise? Exactly. So it's a warning. And that's why, and I hate, I always hate to sound like the black pill doom and gloom type of guy. But when we're just, it just feels like we're on this trajectory. And that is why it's so concerning kind of seeing what, what's happening with the next election with 2024 and how that plays out. It's not, it's not really, you know, sky is following prediction to say that.

like we could face like another wave of kind of just this high intensity breakdown depending on how the results go because again people need to have faith in elections people need to have faith in the process and for a lot of Americans they they don't and there's multiple reasons for that and so you know I don't I always say I don't know where exactly where we're headed because you know I'm not don't claim to to know the future but I I don't have a good feeling about where we're headed and that's not the state's a foregone conclusion No, but there is that kind of palpable anxiety that people get by watching things go in that direction. Yeah, and yeah, they might feel powerless to stop it.

And again, because the surefire way that historically is like, well, at least we have our vote. Right. At least we can hopefully change things through votes. But obviously, it's not just like the outcome of elections, but then we see what happens when, like, you know, Republicans get in power. And how do they do that? What happens when we pass the baton? Do you govern? Do you actually use the power of the mandate that the voters gave you?

And I'd say this house, at least with the house majority, I'd say it's been a mixed bag. Right. I think it's been better than what was predicted. But obviously there's always room for improvement. But again, I just think that for me, in looking towards the future, I'm just, I'm preparing myself to be as busy again. Because it's better to be prepared for it.

Because I wasn't prepared in 2020. Right. And I learned as I went. But for now, I'm preparing to see if I have to be across the country again. Right. So that's kind of the thing that I kind of wanted to finish out on is that I'm hoping that because we do the kind of on-the-ground reporting, you know, me getting thrown out of school board meetings, you getting, you know, shoved around in riots. I know which one I prefer.

That people will prepare so they also don't have to be in the middle of a riot or thrown out of their own school board meetings. Yeah. Yeah, and no, for sure, because, I mean, we've gone through cycles, right? because like the most recent, I would say, like, large-scale riots was back in the 90s, in 92 with Los Angeles. Yeah, we had Ferguson, but it was really... God bless those rooftop Koreans. Oh, yes. Yeah.

I mean, they made a comeback back then. But so, but that wasn't, that wasn't nationwide. And that's why it was so concerning because at first, after Minneapolis, I thought, okay, I covered that. I'm done with that. Let's go back to doing what we were before. And then it turned into, well, will these things ever stop? Right. And it had to take literally the Derek Sovintrtle to finally let the rage dissipate.

Right. But it's still kind of there. It's simmering right now. Right under the surface kind of thing. Yeah, kind of right under the surface. And so, again, we kind of need the, it's kind of like the fire, you know, the triangle fire, the fire triangle that's needed. I'm really messing that up. It's a little bit botched, but not as bad as you think.

Yeah, I know what you mean, though. It needs all three components in order for it to, to. actually be started. And so I'd say we, I'd say we have two of those three right now. That's, and so if we just have that third one, and that's what I'm saying, the outcome of the 2024 election, that could be that third side. You know, maybe, maybe something happens. And I'm not trying to like wishcast it, but it's, it's just from what I've seen and what has happened since 2020, it's definitely not out of the realm of possibility. Absolutely. Well, Lou, thanks for coming on. And thanks for, you know,

having the Cajonis to dive into the fray and, you know, get, what needs to be out there to everybody who's not in the middle of the riot. Yeah, no, thank you for having me. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thank you for listening to The Daily Signal podcast. If you haven't gotten a chance, be sure to check out our evening show right here in this podcast feed, where we bring you the top news of the day.

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