Donald Trump Jr. on Monday called out Democrats looking to defund police departments in the wake of George Floyd protests should start by cutting their own security detail.
Trump said that the entire country has called for the end of police brutality but said calls to cut funding for police departments would do little to stop abuses and would make the most vulnerable communities more vulnerable.
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“Will those same anti-cop Dems call for their security details to be cut?” Trump asked.
Democratic leadership in the House and Senate on Monday unveiled legislation that would increase the accountability of police officers and remove immunity from legal consequences stemming from acts committed in the line of duty. But came up short from calling for police departments to be defunded.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar have been two vocal advocates to take drastic action. Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., told Spectrum News 1 that some of the NYPD’s $6 billion in annual funding should be redirected to address systemic racism. She said the $6 billion budget for the city police “costs us books in the hands of our children and costs us very badly needed” investment in public housing.
Omar, D-Minn., took it a step further and said that the Minneapolis Police Department is “rotten to the root” and should be dismantled. She called the department a cancer that needs to be amputated so it does not spread, the New York Post reported.
Key Democrats, including presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden, are distancing themselves from the “defund” push.
“I don’t support defunding the police. I support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency, honorableness and, in fact, are able to demonstrate they can protect the community, everybody in the community,” Biden told “CBS Evening News” on Monday.
Floyd, a handcuffed black man, died May 25 after a white police officer pressed his knee into his neck for several minutes even after he stopped moving and pleading for air. His death set off protests, some violent, in Minneapolis that swiftly spread to cities around the U.S. and the globe.
Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer charged with second-degree murder, appeared in court Monday and Hennepin County Judge Jeannice M. Reding raised his bail from $500,000 to $1 million
Last week, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said that he tasked the city to “identify $250 million in cuts” to invest more money into the black community, communities of color, women and “people who have been left behind.”
“It’s time to move our rhetoric towards action to end racism in our city,” he said, according to Deadline. “Prejudice can never be part of police work…It takes bravery to save lives, too.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., were asked by a CNN reporter if they supported the movement to defund the police entirely.
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“That’s a local decision,” Pelosi said.
Fox News’ Brooke Singman and the Associated Press contributed to this report
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