Trump Draws Battle Line on “Defund the Police”
Is a majority of the voting public really ready to defund the police?
Most Americans had never heard the phrase, “defund the police,” prior to the end of May 2020, when the brutal killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis thrust the Black Lives Matter movement, and their platform of defunding the police, into the spotlight.
Before voters had a chance to unpack, “defund the police,” and determine just what such a policy would entail, the calls escalated into, “dismantle the police,” and, “disband the police.”
Quickly, “defund the police,” became, “abolish the police.”
The calls for these concessions were suddenly everywhere; written in graffiti on buildings in large cities, a condition under which a teacher’s union in California would agree to return to work in the fall.
These relatively new ideas were openly discussed in the public square. Journalists and media companies devoted plenty of digital ink to the topic. One doesn’t need to be a data scientist to know that searches for the topic “defund the police,” went up suddenly and sharply in June.
Soon, it became clear, and it remains clear, that on the left, “defund the police,” doesn’t mean the same thing to every Democrat.