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It is as horrific as anything you’ll ever see happen to an innocent person: A young Ukrainian woman, minding her own business on a light rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina, suddenly attacked from behind by a black man wielding a knife, stabbing and killing her before walking off and saying, “I got the white girl.”

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And the murder is all on video. Iryna Zarutska was a refugee from Ukraine who fled the country after the Russians invaded for the alleged safety and security in the United States. But that thought process turned out to be an illusion, because our so-called leaders and judges have made this country infinitely less safe for no good reason.

CRIME IN US CITIES AS TRUMP AIMS TO EXPAND CRACKDOWN: LATEST COVERAGE

The suspect is Decarlos Brown Jr. He has a rap sheet that includes several counts of federal larceny, robbery with a dangerous weapon, assaulting his sister, trespassing, and calling 911 from a hospital, among other crimes.

So the question is: How was the person not already in prison? The answer, of course, is that he was continually arrested only to be put back on the street despite being a clear danger to others.

This case was originally not covered at all by most legacy media outlets despite being a top trending story on social media sites such as X. But when it got too big to ignore, what we read and heard out of networks such as Axios and CNN was, and there’s no other word to describe it, despicable.

Here’s an actual Axios headline on Monday:

“The gruesome video of the fatal knife attack on Iryna Zarutska on a light-rail car in Charlotte is drawing attention from MAGA influencers seeking to elevate the issue of violent urban crime — and accuse mainstream media of under-covering shocking cases.”

Wait, what? The fatal knife attack is only drawing attention from MAGA influencers? It’s creating, per Axios’s clear implication, a perception that violent urban crime is somehow exaggerated?

Let’s look at the numbers where this latest murder took place in Charlotte. In 2018, according to the Charlotte Police Department, there were 57 murders recorded. In 2024, that number nearly doubled to 110. Are “MAGA influencers” therefore wrong in elevating the issue of violent crime in Charlotte and other major cities?

Thankfully, the Axios story was eviscerated online for its blatant bias and dishonesty. But it didn’t stop there: Enter CNN’s Brian Stelter, who piously lectured earlier this week that race had absolutely, positively nothing to do with Zarutska’s execution.

“Most murders in the U.S. never become national news,” Stelter said Monday. “This one’s got our attention for a couple of reasons. No. 1, first and foremost, the recent release of that gruesome video. Second, the energy from pro-Trump activists. They picked up on this video from local news and ran with it.

“In this case, it is Trump-aligned influencers who are posting up a storm about this case on social media, really over the weekend. Elon Musk, Charlie Kirk, other Trump-aligned figures succeeded in making this senseless death a symbol of big-city crime.

“I have to say, some of the replies to Musk, some of the comments around this story are baldly racist, stoking fear of African Americans because this man attacked a White woman. The open racism on sites like X today, it’s eye-popping.”

Stelter never mentioned that the alleged killer literally boasted, “I got the white woman” after stabbing her to death. Race absolutely played a factor here. But Stelter is especially accomplished at the bias of omission to push false narratives. He didn’t disappoint here. Nor did Van Jones, who once somehow chalked up President Donald Trump’s 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton to racist voters.

“We don’t know why this man did what he did,” Jones said Monday night before blaming Kirk for assigning a motive to the murder based on race. But when the alleged murderer literally invokes race after committing the act, as was the case here, it’s only common sense to assign that very motive.

“I just give my love and hope to the family of the young woman who was stabbed in Charlotte by a madman, a lunatic,” Trump said Monday. “She’s just sitting there, it’s on the tape. It’s not really watchable because it’s so horrible, just viciously stabbed. They’re evil people. We have to be able to handle that. If we don’t handle that, we don’t have a country.”

The effort by the media in their coverage of the Charlotte murder is part of a larger effort to attack Trump on his tough-on-crime policy. We’ve seen it for weeks, starting with Trump’s decision to send in the National Guard to Washington, resulting in a steep drop in crime. He wants to send the National Guard into Chicago next, but Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL) is resisting at every turn in offering zero cooperation while claiming that Chicago has become a much safer city.

But on cue, over Labor Day weekend alone, 54 people were shot in Chicago. Nine were killed. Last weekend, 19 people were shot, and seven were killed. Yet Pritzker, because he really wants to be president, continues to deny Trump’s offer to help simply to play the role of resistance hero in an effort to boost poll numbers with progressive Democrats.

Speaking of progressive Democrats, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) weighed in to share what the role of law enforcement is really about. And if you thought stupidity is a handicap in politics, think again.

“I want to be clear that, like, law enforcement isn’t to prevent crime,” she said on a podcast ironically called Grounded. “Law enforcement solves crime, OK? That is what they’re supposed to do. They’re supposed to solve crimes, not necessarily to prevent them from happening, per se.”

OK, so by this logic, if police raid the home of a possible mass shooter before he carries out such an attack, they’re not doing their job? Or if a highway patrol officer pulls over a drunk driver before he or she kills someone, that’s also not part of the job?

Back to the Charlotte murder, the suspect, Brown, once told officers after being arrested that he believed that he was given some kind of material that “controlled what he ate,” according to police records. When officers told Brown they couldn’t help him with this fabricated condition, a judge simply released him without bail. Overall, Brown had been arrested in the same county 14 times, including for violent crimes, yet was continually released back into the public.

From 2017 until earlier this year, North Carolina was run by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who plans to run for Senate in 2026. And just as it is with Govs. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and Pritzker, it will be interesting to hear how he’s going to defend himself on his record when it comes to what appears to be an unofficial catch-and-release policy in the Tar Heel State.

A recent Ipsos poll shows that then-President Joe Biden was 26 points underwater in August 2024 on how voters viewed his handling of crime. Trump has surged on this issue following the National Guard deployment to Washington, with a majority of people now approving of his tactics.

Once again, Democrats and their allies in the media are on the wrong side of a major issue.

Zarutska should be alive today.

Brown should have been in a prison cell for some time now.

The system failed her.

MASS SHOOTINGS ARE A CULTURAL SICKNESS WITH NO LEGISLATIVE CURE

The media continue to fail us.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.