The Derek Chauvin verdict has elicited plenty of commentary from people who really have no business weighing in on the trial and today, Glenn Beck joins that list.
The conservative commentator paid a visit to Tucker Carlson yesterday to preach forgiveness for Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who murdered an unarmed Black man named George Floyd last summer. Floyd’s tragic death sparked protests and demonstrations calling attention to the systemic problems within our justice and policing systems so Chauvin’s trial was always going to be polarizing. For many, the guilty verdict represents much-needed accountability for law enforcement. For Beck, it represented an opportunity to appear on camera and urge us all to be more like the Amish.
The latest tweets from @glennbeck. Glenn Beck is a leading American media personality, political commentator, author, and founder of TheBlaze.
No, seriously. Beck told Carlson he was discouraged by the responses to Chauvin’s conviction.
“This takes another man who got up one day and wasn’t thinking, ‘I’m going to kill somebody,’ away from his family — perhaps for the rest of his life,” Beck said before referencing a mass shooting that happened within the Amish community over a decade ago. “I wish we could be a little more like the Amish. When the gunman came in and killed a lot of their children, they mourned with [for] their children but they also went and mourned with the killer’s family.”
Beck seemed to be referencing a shooting that happened in 2006 in which five Amish girls were killed. The community reportedly attended the funeral of the gunman, showing support for the shooter’s family. He went on to complain that the focus of Chauvin’s guilty verdict seemed to be solely on our need for “collective justice.”
glenn beck saying we should also mourn chauvin because he'll most likely die in prison. and I'd just like to say
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good. pic.twitter.com/a4xwTqaXMB
Glenn Beck Blaze Radio
— Kat Abu (@abughazalehkat) April 21, 2021
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We could point out the differences between a civilian carrying out a mass shooting and a police officer using his authority and position of power to kill an unarmed Black man. We could also point out that, as lovely as Beck’s story about forgiveness is, it’s never the responsibility of victims or their families to offer that to perpetrators, but we’re pretty sure this guy just wouldn’t get it.