President Trump and Republicans have little to say in response to the public outcry over systemic racism in the criminal justice system. Many still deny that it exists. Therefore, they do what Republicans always do when they are out of step with the public and lack any plausible policy response: They resort to a word game to smear their opponents.
In this case, they got an assist from the slogan makers of “defund the police,” a phrase that’s popped up recently in some progressive rhetoric (including literally on the street during protests in Washington). It’s unclear whether these activists want to do away with the police or whether, as is already happening in Los Angeles, they want money redirected toward social services that are more effective in reducing the circumstances that give rise to crime and in heading off confrontations between the police and minority communities over nonviolent, petty crime.
In any event, Trump and Vice President Pence have been blabbering that Democrats and former vice president Joe Biden specifically want to do away with cops. Anarchy! Chaos! This is rubbish as was evident from the remarks of Democratic leaders and the Congressional Black Caucus on Monday when they rolled out a whole list of police reforms.
Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has no intention of getting roped into Trump’s semantics game. His campaign put out a statement on Monday: “As his criminal justice proposal made clear months ago, Vice President Biden does not believe that police should be defunded,” Biden campaign spokesperson Andrew Bates said. “He hears and shares the deep grief and frustration of those calling out for change, and is driven to ensure that justice is done and that we put a stop to this terrible pain.”
The argument is particularly silly when applied to Biden. His opponents, including Trump, never tire of complaining about the 1994 crime bill which, among other things, put 100,000 more cops on the street. That bill may have contributed to a great many problems (e.g., mass incarceration), but it is evidence that Biden has never sought to dismantle police departments. Biden, moreover, already has put out a plan to provide $300 million in community policing funds.
Trump, on the other hand, actually wants to cut funding for cops. That’s right. Vox reported in 2018 that Trump proposed “a nearly 50 percent cut to the COPS Hiring Program, which helps hire local police officers.” This wasn’t a one-time effort. For its 2020 budget, the Trump administration proposed “a 2.3 percent reduction in the Justice Department’s budget, much of that money coming from grant programs like COPS, which pays for local police agencies to hire new officers.” Oops! To this day, Republicans are refusing to pass an additional stimulus bill that would give hundreds of millions to state and local governments to keep law enforcement and first responders on budget. If a Democrat did this, the Republicans would be asking, “Why do they hate cops?”
Trump’s utter lack of leadership and dearth of policy ideas cedes the entire issue of police reform to Democrats. He won’t win back the issue by throwing a slogan in his opponent’s face — especially when that slogan more accurately applies to him.
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