Are you ready for a good laugh? Here it comes: the White House is accusing House Republicans of wanting to defund the police while simultaneously claiming that Joe Biden wants to protect their funding.
“Joe Biden won’t let Congressional Republicans defund the police, abolish law enforcement agencies like the FBI, gut crime prevention, or rollback landmark legislation critical to the fight against gun crime,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told Fox News Digital.
It’s strange that the White House still thinks it can successfully flip the script on this. Many Democrats have gone on record stating without equivocation that they support defunding the police.
This is not the first time we’ve seen efforts to blame Republicans for defunding the police. In fact, the narrative goes back years.
During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden embraced defunding the police. In the summer of 2020, he unequivocally announced his support during an interview with liberal activist Ady Barkan.
“Do we agree that we can redirect some of the [police] funding?” Barkan asked.
“Yes, absolutely,” Biden said.
Joe Biden says “Yes, absolutely!” to “redirecting” police funding and calls them “the enemy.”pic.twitter.com/rM4zSTl1IL
— Matt Margolis (@mattmargolis) July 17, 2020
When it became clear that the Defund the Police movement was politically toxic, Biden tried to shift his tone, and he falsely claimed Trump was the one who wanted to defund law enforcement. It didn’t work. Trump won the endorsement of key police unions like the New York police union and the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest police union. Biden also lost the endorsement of the National Association of Police Organizations, which had endorsed him in past elections. Even the Delaware Fraternal Order of Police endorsed Trump.
A year later, after many Democrat-controlled cities had taken steps to defund their police forces — with disastrous results — then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki claimed, “Republicans voted to defund the police.’” Psaki’s ridiculous claim was so easily debunked by the evidence that the liberal media couldn’t pretend it was true. Even the Washington Post debunked it. When the liberal media can’t cover for you, you know you’re barking up the wrong tree. But, the White House didn’t get the message, and it kept trying to link the Republican Party to the Defund the Police movement.
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In 2022, White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates told Fox News Digital that Republicans “continually attempted to defund the police by voting to eliminate the COPS program the president created and are even advocating to defund the FBI.”
The White House contends that the House Republican Study Committee’s (RSC) Fiscal Year 2025 budget plan aims to reduce funding for Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS). In response, the RSC has accused the White House of overlooking the fact that COPS funding has significantly risen since the Trump administration. They argue that this increase is due to Democrat-led cities seeking bailouts after reducing funding for their police departments.
Obviously, none of the Democrats’ attempts to link Republicans to efforts to defund the police have worked. Democrats owned the movement for too long. This is yet another classic example of Democrats accusing Republicans of supporting something that Democrats are guilty of.