Last year, we documented how the Media Research Center rushed to the defense of Daniel Perry, a Texas man on trial for killing a man taking part in a Black Lives Matter protest, with Nicholas Fondacaro asserting that the victim, Garrett Foster, was “brandishing a weapon” at Perry, omitting the fact that prosecution witnesses stated that Perry initiated the confrontation by driving into the midst of a crowd of protesters and that no witness to the incident saw Foster point his gun at Perry. Fondacaro’s defense of Perry fell apart even further when it was later revealed that Perry had a history of making racist and violent comments on social media, stating just a couple months before the shooting that “I might go to Dallas to shoot looters,” and stating in another post that “It is official I am a racist because I do not agree with people acting like animals at the zoo.”
Despite all that evidence, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ended up pardoning Perry, which led to a new round of MRC defense. Clay Waters groused in a May 18 post:
The PBS NewsHour on Friday questioned Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s pardon of “convicted killer Daniel Perry” as a sop to “white right-wing conservatives.” Host Geoff Bennett loaded his lead to tar Abbott’s decision right from the start.
Geoff Bennett: Texas Governor Greg Abbott has pardoned a man convicted of fatally shooting a Black Lives Matter protester in the summer of 2020. Abbott had faced pressure to issue the pardon from white right-wing conservatives, including then- Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Reporter Stephanie Sy also loaded her description, complete with an extraneous mention of the white victim’s “black fiancé,” but barely mentioning that the BLM-supporting victim, Garrett Foster, was also armed and allegedly raised his weapon at Perry. (An AK-47 rifle no less, a tool feared by the liberal media.)
Waters didn’t mention that no witness saw Foster raise his weapon at Perry. He also complained that Foster’s fiance wrote a “hysterically strong letter” claiming that Abbott “has declared that Texans who hold political views that are different from his and different from those in power can be killed in this state with impunity,” though he made no attempt to rebut that opinion.
Intern Michael Wnek repeated similarly dubious defenses of Perry in a May 21 post complaining that MSNBC host Joy Reid criticized the pardon:
She further commented on Abbott’s recent pardon of Daniel Perry, a man convicted of shooting and killing a Black Lives Matter activist. Reid didn’t bother to explain that the pardon was granted on the basis of Texas’ “Stand Your Ground” law, which protects the right of self-defense using deadly force.
The MSNBC host falsely asserted that Perry, an Uber driver, simply “[drove] his car into a group of pedestrian marchers,” though he actually stopped his car when he reached the intersection blocked by protestors and allowed some of them to cross. It was then that Garrett Foster, one of the activists, allegedly raised his weapon, an AK-47, prompting Perry to fire his own revolver. Reid summed up the entire situation by stating it occurred “Because in Texas, the only thing actually illegal is trying to vote while black and on parole.” Foster was white.
Actually, witnesses and the prosecution said that Perry ran a red light and drove into the crowd. Wnek, like Waters, censored the fact that no witness saw Foster raise his weapon and that Perry made racist posts on social media and declared that “I might go to Dallas to shoot looters.”
The following day, Wnek whined again that Reid “again harped on Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s pardon of Daniel Perry, which NewsBusters previously addressed, that ‘Republicans are already enforcing [Trump’s] vision’ of promising ‘to grant immunity to all police officers so they’re free to kill anyone like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Roger Fortson.'” Wnek made no effort to rebut anything Reid said.