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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsKenosha visit reality: Trump is anything but a 'law and order' leader
Link to tweet
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/09/02/kenosha-visit-trump-not-law-and-order-president-column/5681545002/
In heading to Kenosha, Wis. to address unrest there, Donald Trump has claimed the mantle of law and order for his presidency. In fact, he has shown only disdain for both. He has failed to keep people safe the central reason we care about law and order and the most basic and important duty of a president. As former federal prosecutors and law enforcement officials with 100 years of collective experience, we offer some thoughts about what it means to truly lead on public safety issues.
Trump is not pro-law enforcement
First, Trump is not pro-law enforcement. He has spent much of the past three and a half years smearing law enforcement when he dislikes the subject of their investigations or their conclusions. Trump repeatedly called a legitimate investigation into Russias attacks on our election a rigged witch hunt; compared FBI agents to stormtroopers when carrying out a court-authorized search warrant; mischaracterized FBI work with loaded words like infiltrating or spying; and suggested that flipping cooperators (a practice upon which many significant criminal cases are built) should be illegal. He heralded the intelligence community when it successfully targeted terrorists overseas, but vilified the intelligence community when it concluded Russia interfered with the 2016 election. Support of law enforcement is not supposed to be transactional, but that is Donald Trumps worldview.
Even when professing to support law enforcement, Trump and his Attorney General William Barr have done so in ways that are designed to inflame tensions between law enforcement and the people they serve. Trump encouraged police not to be too nice in handling suspects. Barr threatened communities that dont show law enforcement more respect with the loss of police protective services.
Actions by law enforcement should be scrutinized critically to be sure, and officers held accountable when they violate their duty of trust. But the unfair and categorical attacks by the president can and will impede the progress of everyday cases that we need to protect public safety from murderers, sexual predators, human traffickers and terrorists. In other words, the antithesis of law and order.
*snip*
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Kenosha visit reality: Trump is anything but a 'law and order' leader (Original Post)
Nevilledog
Sep 2020
OP
regnaD kciN
(26,035 posts)1. Oh, he's definitely a "law and order" president...
To paraphrase an anti-Wallace campaign spot in 1968: "He makes the law, we take the orders."
Blue Owl
(49,913 posts)2. He is flawed and odious
Deeply flawed, and deeply odious...
uponit7771
(90,225 posts)3. K&R, The guy who ran a take charity doesn't get to claim law and order