“Out of 7,750 protests last summer associated with BLM and Antifa, 570 turned into violent riots that killed 25 people and caused $1- $2 billion of property damage. That’s why I would have been more concerned.”
— Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), in a statement, March 13
Johnson has come under fire for telling a conservative news radio show that he “never felt threatened” by the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, but he would have been concerned if the mob had been made up of Black Lives Matter or antifa protesters. Referring to Trump supporters, he said: “I knew those are people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law.”
We will leave the political commentary to others. We are interested in the facts that Johnson used to document his concern after the uproar started.
While he did not identify the source of his information in his statement, in a March 15 Wall Street Journal op-ed defending his remarks, Johnson confirmed that first set of numbers came from a study by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project(ACLED), a nonprofit data collection, analysis and crisis mapping project. The property damage figures are from a different source. Continue reading.