Fox’s Sandra Smith pulled a journalistic sleight-of-hand today when she deceitfully suggested that women voters feel just as endangered by Black Lives Matter protests as the coronavirus pandemic “if they walk down the street.”

While it’s true some protests have turned violent, there has been nothing like the American death toll from COVID-19, currently approaching 180,000. Earlier this month, PolitiFact couldn’t find evidence that even 36 had been killed nor 1000 police officers injured during protests.

That is not to say that any violence is OK with me. But there’s no comparison about which is the bigger threat to me or anyone I know. In fact, I worry more about anti-maskers getting violent than Black Lives Matter protesters.

I’m not alone in thinking the pandemic is a much bigger problem. A recent Gallup poll found race relations/racism and crime/violence in distant third and fifth places, respectively, behind coronavirus/diseases as the most important non-economic problem facing the country.

But Smith put protest violence on par with coronavirus in a question to South Dakota’s Trumpy Republican governor, Kristi Noem today. Coincidentally, Smith’s question also ignored Noem’s terrible record on the pandemic as well as the recent spike in cases in her state.

Referencing a Washington Post article about a gender “chasm” in support for Trump, Smith “asked” Noem, “How do you speak to those GOP female voters, many of whom are privately quoted in this Washington Post article, who are concerned about the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. They’re concerned about the violence and unrest in our streets across America that is happening. The safety of their family if they walk down the street. What’s your message?”

Noem seized the GOP bait:

NOEM: There is no mother in this country that wants to raise her children on the streets of Portland or Seattle or Washington. So, I think what’s incredibly important is that mothers get up every single day and look at the life they want for their children and for their grandchildren in the future and it is not found in these Democrat-led cities. We need leadership that will uphold the rule of law, that will make sure they’re delivering opportunities for their kids and that is the very clear choice in this election that we’ll continue to talk about. A Democrat-led cities [sic] and their leadership team has brought us this violence and that is why we need to re-elect President Trump.

Wait a minute! Did she just say it’s important to have leadership that will uphold the rule of law? Trump just broke the law at the RNC. That’s not including the laws he is suspected of having broken in New York, nor the sexual assault laws he has been accused of breaking by multiple women. Michael Cohen promises to reveal more. And I've still probably left some out.

But Smith let the lie go unchallenged. Instead, she invited Noem to rail against Democrats by asking “what lessons” she learned from the Democratic National Convention convention last week and will she adjust her speech at tonight's RNC as a result.

“I’ll be honest with you,” Noem said. “There’s a lot of it I couldn’t watch. It was depressing. It created fear, anxiety and that’s not what America is about.”

You can watch Smith whitewash Republican coronavirus mismanagement below, from the August 26, 2020 America’s Newsroom.