CNN energetically suggested during the unrest in Los Angeles over immigration enforcement actions this weekend that it was "mostly peaceful."

In the midnight hour (Eastern time) on Sunday, CNN media analyst Brian Stelter insisted "the vast majority of these actions have been peaceful" and Trump is "stoking a fight" out of these "very isolated episodes of unrest." Stelter dragged out Ruth Ben-Ghiat and the usual Trump-The-Authoritarian narrative, that this is somehow Trump is using "fake emergencies to justify crackdowns."

CNN host Brian Abel mentioned that Trump was attending a UFC fight in New Jersey as Trump ordered California's National Guard into the fray. Stelter was spinning furiously: 

STELTER: The parallelism, the symbolism is striking. The president was at his golf club in Bedminster earlier today, maybe watching pictures of the very scattered, very isolated episodes of unrest around Los Angeles. And then on the way to this UFC match, we learn about this order for the National Guard. So you have him attending a fight on the East Coast while potentially stoking a fight on the West Coast and citing what he calls riots and looters. Even though from all that we've seen, from the visual evidence, what has happened has been very sporadic.

Trump has been very present about on social media this evening....literally interspersing images of him walking out of the UFC fight with his messaging about California. And so that's going to give even more grist to critics who say he is trying to stoke conflict, trying to cause actual fighting on the West Coast."

When it came to the January 6 riot, it seemed like no one on the scene was a "peaceful protester," that every one of them was menacing because they were big Trump supporters. Here you have radical leftists with their "FUCK ICE" messaging, and the "vast majority" are considered "peaceful."

STELTER: You know, we have seen today FBI officials, for example, point to social media videos and say that they see isolated individuals throwing rocks at police cars, at border patrol cars. And, of course, FBI director Kash Patel and others saying that those people will be found and will be held accountable. So those videos are in some cases, helping law enforcement to track down what has happened on the ground. Those videos also show that the vast majority of these actions have been peaceful, and that there are lots of folks just trying to be heard on the streets in and around L.A.

Stelter cited California Democrats trying to turn down the temperature, that somehow the people setting cars on fire aren't "inflammatory," but Trump is. He's not really calming this down by calling Trump a dictator: 

STELTER: For the most part, you have California Democrats saying, hey, it's the Trump administration that's trying to be inflammatory here. Don't fall for it. I know some other senators as well. Democratic Senator Brian Schatz calling this, quote, "authoritarian madness," and again saying Trump wants the visual spectacle. He's going to want to see members of the military on the streets in L.A. We do know the president, of course, a former reality show star. He thinks in terms of those visuals, he thinks in terms of the pictures that he can create. And, you know, you have to wonder about whether that's a factor in this particular situation.

I would also call out the number of scholars, folks who have studied authoritarianism in other countries, people like Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of the book Strongmen, who says fake emergencies to justify crackdowns, has a long history around the world. You have a number of scholars who believe this has echoes to undemocratic countries in other parts of the world.

CNN's approach isn't Facts First. It's Fascism Smears First.