We’ve all seen that new Trump campaign ad showing their interpretation of what would happen if police departments are defunded.
In the ad, images of violent protests played on screen while an answering service narrates: “You have reached the 911 police emergency line. Due to defunding of the police department, we’re sorry but no one is here to take your call. If you’re calling to report a rape, please press 1. To report a murder, press 2. To report a home invasion, press 3. For all other crimes, leave your name and number and someone will get back to you. Our estimated wait time is currently 5 days. Goodbye.”
The ad is part of Donald Trump’s strategy to weaponize protesters call to “defund the police” in the wake of George Floyd’s death, using it as an attack on Biden. In the ad, the campaign warned viewers “you won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.”
Trump’s attacks on Biden have failed to land so far and this one was no different. A recent Monmouth University poll shows that voters aren’t buying Trump’s interpretation of what defunding the police would mean.
According to the poll, only 18 percent of voters think ‘defund the police’ means getting rid of police departments while 77 percent believe that the activists who use this phrase want to see changes in the way police departments operate.
This increases pressure on Donald Trump because there is a wide consensus about the need for police reform. According to Axios, Trump is backing away from taking any meaningful actions to try and restrain police after signing that toothless police reform executive order last month. He has cast himself as the “law and order” president and has made it very clear that he supports law enforcement unequivocally. Therefore, he won’t do anything that could be seen as undercutting police. So, once again he’s on the wrong side of an issue yet, he’s trying to make it the key issue in the November elections.
Stop saying defund the police
In spite of the result from this poll, Democrats should stop saying “defund the police” if that is not the intended goal. Joe Biden does not support calls to defund the police, quite the opposite. He has proposed more funding–$300 million– to funding departments willing to implement meaningful reforms.
“While I do not believe federal dollars should go to police departments that are violating people’s rights or turning to violence as the first resort, I do not support defunding police,” Biden wrote in a USA Today op-ed. “The better answer is to give police departments the resources they need to implement meaningful reforms, and to condition other federal dollars on completing those reforms.”
For now at least, what we have is another ineffective ad against Biden that we’ll all forget by the time the weekend is over.
Thank you for The Mind Shield! Thank you for covering stories that need to be picked out and dissected! Obviously we can’t live with no police, but we can’t live with bad police. There is a lot of work to be done.