Dan Abrams and Juan Williams Clash In Fiery Debate On Policing, BLM, Jan 6: ‘Whoa, Whoa, Whoa!’

Mediaite founder Dan Abrams and Fox News political analyst Juan Williams clashed in a debate that touched on everything from Black Lives Matter to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Williams joined Abrams on his SiriusXM POTUS Channel show this week to discuss his book New Prize for the These Eyes: The Rise of America’s Second Civil Rights Movement where Williams dives into a number of major events that have sparked civil rights debates across the country.

After Abrams and Williams agreed on opposing the defunding police movements, Abrams jumped straight into George Floyd’s 2020 death in police custody and the widespread Black Lives Matter protests that followed. Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is currently spending decades behind bars after being convicted on murder charges following video capturing him holding his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly 10 minutes while he was detained.

Abrams, the host of On Patrol Live, argued that part of the reason President Donald Trump got elected is because people felt there was too much of an “anti-police sentiment” growing in protests focused on Floyd’s death.

He said:

The police were attacked with a broad brush of saying, across the country, a lot of the protests you’re talking about were against police. And it wasn’t just against the police officers involved. It was just against police in general. It was protesting against police officers. And again, I think that part of the reason Donald Trump got elected, part, not saying it was the driving force, it was the issue — I’m just saying part of the reason I think Donald Trump got elected was because there were a lot of people in this country who felt that the anti-police sentiment, the post-George Floyd protests and riots were the beginning of something that a lot of people in this country felt was too much.

Williams accused Abrams of painting a “caricature” of the Black Lives Matter protests. He argued that he found in his own research for his book that more than 90% of the protests in question were peaceful, a fact Abrams dismissed as irrelevant.

“But that doesn’t mean anything,” Abrams said.

“Yeah, it does!” Williams shot back.

“Juan, it’s like saying at the Capitol, oh, the vast majority of people there were peaceful. What does that mean?” Abrams said.

“The vast majority at the Capitol were not peaceful,” Williams responded.

“No, no, it’s absolutely true the vast majority of the people of the Capitol engaged in no violence, in no property damage,” Abrams noted.

Abrams pointed out the charges brought against the rioters show that a “vast majority” were non-violent. That though, Abrams said returning to his original point, does not excuse everyone.

“If you have enough people that were violent, it doesn’t matter that there were a lot of people who were peaceful, they ruin it for the others,” he said.

Williams returned to defending Black Lives Matter protests, arguing they were not against police across the board. When he noted that many demonstrators were white, Abrams threw down a red flag.

“Given the kind of framework you just offered, it comes as a surprise to people that two thirds of the people marching after George Floyd died were white people, in the majority, overwhelmingly. These are not some far left, crazy radicals,” Williams said.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! But they could also be far left and be white. I mean, you just gave me a racial statistic,” Abrams said in shock.

“As I said to, you and I disagree, I think most of those marches were people of goodwill who simply wanted to stand up for that man’s life,” Williams said, then citing the death of Trayvon Martin, opening up another debate with Abrams.

Martin was shot and killed by George Zimmerman in 2012. The case sparked outrage similar to Floyd. Zimmerman was acquitted of second degree murder.

The case, Abrams argued, is far more “nuanced” than Floyd, but it carries with it the same problem as other high profile cases: people don’t pay attention to the facts.

“A lot of the time in these protests, people aren’t actually watching what happened in these cases. They aren’t actual focusing on the details of the cases. And that’s why when there are acquittals sometimes, there are these explosions because people didn’t actually pay attention to the trials,” Abrams said, noting a little-talked-about injury on the back of Zimmerman’s head from the encounter.

Williams accused Abrams of getting lost in “factual weeds” and only looking at the cases through his “legal background glasses,” while Abrams said public figures should be focused on the facts of these cases, regardless of emotion.

“My point is, let’s make sure that the outrage is based on accurate facts,” he said. “I don’t think that’s putting on sort of legal blinders to things, to say, let people like you and me who are viewed as you know, reasonable voices that we get out there and we said, Oh, guys, hang on. Here are the facts on this and here are the facts on that.”

The pair clashed again when Williams brought up the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

“You don’t want to talk about Ferguson because if you want to talk about Ferguson you’re going to lose the argument Juan,” Abrams said. “There is so much evidence that Michael Brown was the aggressor. And there’s a reason that no one would bring charges — not even the feds because they looked at the case!”

Watch above via SiriusXM and Mediaite.