#Democrats stay silent on violence in their cities: Devine

The timing could not have been more inconvenient for Democrats. The day before they eulogized the Black Lives Matter movement and elevated it to the centerpiece of their national convention, a white man was dragged out of his pickup truck by BLM protesters, kicked in the head and beaten almost to death.

Even more inconvenient was the fact that the victim, laborer Adam Haner, had been trying to stop these “mostly peaceful” social-justice warriors from attacking a transgender woman at the time. You couldn’t make it up.

The sickening hate crimes we are seeing in Democratic-run cities in the name of BLM over the past 12 weeks are occurring with the tacit encouragement of Democratic mayors, governors and district attorneys.

This is the dirty secret Democrats are trying to sweep under the carpet until the election, with the help of their media allies.

Not one word of condemnation have we heard at the Democratic National Convention for the violence and lawlessness that has engulfed Portland, Ore., Seattle, Chicago, Atlanta, Minneapolis and, yes, New York City.

Instead we have heard nudge, nudge, wink, wink encouragement from Democratic leaders for the psychopathic thugs who control the streets.

There was Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley on Saturday, the day before Haner, 40, was bashed senseless, calling for “unrest in the streets” to defeat President Trump.

“There needs to be unrest in the streets for as long as there’s ­unrest in our lives,” she told MSNBC.

Democratic Party Chair Tom Perez took to the convention stage Tuesday to pay lavish homage to “the Black Lives Matter movement [which] has given voice to the deep-seated inequality that has plagued our nation since its inception . . . When we nominate Joe Biden to be our standard-bearer, we will not miss this moment to ensure those values are reflected in everything we do.”

Those values, explicitly laid out by BLM’s self-described “trained Marxist” founders, and on its website, include “a national defunding of police,” “prison abolition,” the destruction of the “Western-prescribed nuclear family structure” and a “queer-affirming network” that will “dismantle cisgender privilege.”

It is a fantasy to pretend that endorsing “black lives matter” explicitly in the Democratic Party platform and dozens of times in its convention has nothing to do with the Marxist, anti-cop, anti-family organization that has co-opted a worthy phrase.

Using lower-case letters does not absolve Democrats of their association with a militant organization inciting racial violence that currently is ruining black lives in the cities they run.

It would be as if al Qaeda renamed itself “Save the Children.” The words do not represent the actions of the organization. They are a ruse to attract support from well-meaning people.

But in the surreal political reality of 2020, we all have to pretend that the Democratic Party is not connected to BLM, which is not connected to the violence on the streets committed in its name.

Sunday night’s attack on Haner was video-recorded by independent reporters. We see the attackers yelling “black lives matter” and people wearing BLM-branded clothing involved, including a white woman who orders someone to record Haner’s license plate.

At one point, a voice is heard admonishing someone live­streaming events: “Do not record [things] that don’t matter to Black Lives Matter.”

After the attack, while Haner was still in the hospital, BLM operatives went online to accuse him falsely of being a white supremacist.

Haner is recovering at home from a serious concussion that has robbed him of his short-term memory, left him sleeping for hours and “feeling ill most of the day,” his older brother, Brian, told The Post.

Any decent political party would immediately cut all ties with BLM.

We are supposed to overlook the fact that Democrat leaders keep signaling their support for such a militant organization while insisting the violence we see is “mostly peaceful protests.”

At the height of BLM’s “defund the police” push last month, for instance, Biden declared he was “absolutely” on board with what was euphemistically put to him, by interviewer Ady Barkan, as “redirecting” some police funding.

Instead of defending police against weeks of violence and denigration, Biden signaled his accord with the anti-cop hatred of the BLM movement.

His campaign has run a million miles from that sentiment ever since and now claims Biden actually wants more funding for police. But we heard him the first time.

Why do you think police organizations across the country, including the NYPD’s rank-and-file ­union, the Police Benevolent Association, have endorsed Trump? They know who has their back and it’s not the Democrats.

Having incited unrest, Democratic leaders deliberately disempowered their police forces, refused to prosecute rioters and are obstructing attempts by the president to send in federal authorities to impose law and order.

In Portland, District Attorney Mike Schmidt has declared he will not prosecute rioters arrested by police.

The same immunity applies in Seattle and in New York, where protesters arrested by police ­haven’t been prosecuted for two months.

“Under the new policy, the DA’s Office declines to prosecute these arrests in the interest of justice,” announced Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. in June.

How, exactly, is it in the interest of justice to allow some people who serve your political interests to break the law with impunity and not others?

But violence and disorder is a Democratic strategy to dislodge Donald Trump from the White House.

They depict the president as “Captain Chaos,” pin the blame on him for the riots, and hope he overreacts by cracking down too hard.

They are banking on frightened Americans voting for them to stop the chaos, which they created.

Unhand this old Trump marriage trope

Desperate anti-Trumpers fell back on an old favorite this week, claiming that the president’s marriage is in trouble because the first lady was spotted refusing to hold her husband’s hand.

A viral video shows Melania Trump and the president stepping off Air Force One on Sunday after a weekend at the Trump golf course in New Jersey.

They are holding hands at the top of the aircraft stairs, but it is windy and her dress billows up. Melania needs one hand to hold the railing and the other to press her wide Birkin bag against her skirt to preserve her modesty as she navigates the stairs in high heels.

The president, like most husbands in that situation, is clueless. He nudges her hand a couple of times with his fingers, to no avail. There is literally nothing acrimonious or remarkable about the 25-second scene. It would be familiar to any married couple, with the wife intent on avoiding a wardrobe malfunction while the husband is oblivious.

Yet deceptive headlines describe the occasion as “Melania repeatedly refuses to hold Trump’s hand in frosty exchange,” and armchair body-language experts opined that Melania hates Donald.

The commentary was a continuation of the four-year campaign to disparage the first lady, mock her marriage and dislodge her family from the White House. But the haters should have realized by now that no amount of mean-girl taunts will turn Melania into the undercover resistance operative of their dreams.

He’s no-show Joe

How many times have we heard Democrats say: “We know Joe Biden”?

They say it so often because they know voters are wondering why they are still hiding their candidate in his basement.

The tiny flashes we get of Biden in ads and prerecorded, carefully edited video only add to the enigma.

We have gotten to know Jill Biden more than we know her husband in the course of the campaign.

She’s done more candid interviews, and on Tuesday night she gave an eloquent speech at the virtual DNC convention telling us how wonderful Joe is.

Don’t worry, the campaign says, you can’t hear from the actual candidate, but trust us, important people know him.

If it is meant to reassure voters, it has the opposite effect. If everyone else knows him, how come we don’t?