President Biden torches Trump’s rhetoric on defunding police, saying it would lead to ‘less safe America’

Washington: US President Joe Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign targetted his predecessor Donald Trump over his rhetoric on defunding police, arguing his policy prescriptions would lead to “a less safe America”.

Biden’s campaign points to past policies Trump has touted such as “stop and frisk”. It also hits the former president over his proposed cuts to community policing programmes while simultaneously criticising the “defund the police” movement, media reports said.

Biden’s birthday reminds voters ‘Bubble Wrap’ plan to protect him, the Washington Examiner said, claiming to have had an exclusive preview of his (Trump’s) vision for America in 2025.

When President, Trump took a hard line on policing projecting himself as a “law and order” president amid rising crime and racial justice protests. Trump called for drug dealers to receive the death penalty and even suggested that police be empowered to shoot shoplifters on the spot. The Biden campaign managers have capitalised on this offensive rhetoric to counter Trump’s, arguing his solutions to crime would actually leave America less safe.

Referring particularly to Trump’s past support for “stop and frisk,” the Biden team said it was a controversial much criticised police strategy with the potential risk of racial bias and an undue violation of individual’s privacy.

In 2018, Trump claimed, ″Stop and frisk works and it was meant for problems like Chicago.”

Biden’s team says such a policy would amount to police harassing citizens on the street.

On several occasions, Trump has also signalled his support for arming teachers with firearms to protect students from coming harm’s way in the event of a mass shooting by serial offenders. Republican politicians see this as a potential deterrent but has been categorically opposed by Democratic politicians.

Biden’s re-election team says such a policy would make America’s classrooms less safe.

“Political violence, harassing citizens in their own neighbourhoods, gunning down Americans at will, flooding classrooms with more guns. That’s what Donald Trump is promising if he’s elected president again. He’s proudly campaigning on a platform of fear, division and violence. He’s betting that a scared and divided nation is how he wins this election. It didn’t work in 2020, and it won’t work this time either,” Biden campaign spokesman Seth Schuster said in a statement, the Examiner reported.

The Biden campaign is attempting to portray Trump as weak on law enforcement, highlighting his administration’s proposal to disband the Community Relations Service and Community Oriented Policing Services and move their duties to other parts of the Justice Department. The administration at the time defended the proposal as a way to “improve efficiency,” but the Biden campaign is calling it part of a “dangerous MAGA agenda to defund law enforcement”.

Trump’s campaign did not provide comment to the Washington Examiner.

The Biden campaign has already hit the former president over his expected policies on abortion and immigration in a potential 2025 administration as it ramps up attacks on the likely Republican nominee.

–IANS