AN OBVIOUS POINT

This happened yesterday:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday warned of “riots in the streets” if former President Trump is prosecuted for his handling of classified materials found when the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago home.

“If there’s a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information, after the Clinton debacle... there’ll be riots in the streets,” Graham told former South Carolina congressman Trey Gowdy, who now hosts Fox News’ “Sunday Night in America.”

You can read this as "Lindsey Graham threatens violence," and that's a valid interpretation of what he said. But he's also saying that if there are riots in the aftermath of a Trump indictment, they won't be the fault of the rioters. I'm reasonably certain that no Republican ever said that about the moments of violence and property damage that took place in 2020 in the wake of George Floyd's murder. Did Graham or any other Republican blame those smashed windows and burned cars on Derek Chauvin and his fellow police officers? If so, I'm not aware of it.

Republicans' multiple January 6 narratives exonerate members of the party (it was a riot because of Antifa members in disguise, it was a riot because of FBI provocateurs, it was a riot because Nancy Pelosi runs the Capitol Police and wanted a riot, it actually wasn't a riot at all), but this is new: Graham is effectively admitting that his fellow Trump-lovers will be the rioters -- yet it still won't be their fault.

Graham knows, of course, that much of the mainstream commentariat agrees with him and will blame Democrats if Republicans riot. But if that's what you believe, then you should also believe George Floyd protestors were entitled to burn entire cities to the ground. The cops made them do it, right?