Trump has tried to claim Democrats want to eliminate police. Americans aren't buying it.
Never ones to shy from hyperbole, President Trump and his reelection campaign have made a concerted effort to suggest that Democrats (and former vice president Joe Biden, Trump’s likely opponent in November) want to do away with police departments.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the “defund the police” slogan that emerged from the recent Black Lives Matter protests is meant to suggest that Democrats want to eliminate the police. His campaign created a video that mirrors a racist One America News Network ad meant to suggest that police departments would be unable to respond to emergencies. The ad claims that “violent crime has exploded” and shows Biden’s face over video footage of recent protests saying that “you won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America” — though recent crime statistics and video footage have raised some questions about Trump’s America, too.
For the president who won his election in 2016 after focusing on law and order (though not necessarily because of it), it’s a natural extension of his rhetoric, leveraging the recent protests, however awkwardly.
Americans aren’t buying it.
On Wednesday, Monmouth University released a poll looking at the protests and responses to them. Among the questions asked was a straightforward one: What do you understand “defund the police” to mean? More than three-quarters of Americans — and two-thirds of Republicans — understood it to mean what protest organizers intend: that it’s a call to change how police operate.
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