Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Trump a voice of reason on police reform
PWASHINGTON RESIDENT Donald Trump was the voice of reason in Washington on Tuesday as D.C. Democrats were sowing division.
Before he signed an executive order on police reform, Trump had
Black.” His solution isn’t to “defund the police,” as Black Lives Matter suggests, but to move law enforcement in the right direction.
On Wednesday, with the support of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Scott unveiled the Just and Unifying Solutions to Invigorate Communities Everywhere, or JUSTICE, Act. It would promote de-escalation in use-offorce training, use federal funds to discourage police chokeholds, increase record keeping to prevent “bad apple” cops from moving to different departments, promote the proper use of body cameras, require federal reporting when police officers discharge their weapons, fund research into the use of noknock warrants and make lynching a federal crime.
“We’re not a racist country” Scott said Wednesday, but “we deal with racism because there’s racism in the country.”
In short: Some cops are racist, but most cops are good cops. It’s wrong to talk as if all cops are racist because it’s not accurate.
And what is Scott’s reward? Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., dismissed Scott’s bill as a “token half-hearted approach.” Token. Get it?
Earlier in the month, NBC News anchor Craig Melvin asked Scott if the GOP was using him as a “token.”
Durbin later apologized, but only after Scott said the Democrat’s use of the word “token,” a liberal slur reserved for conservative African Americans, “hurts my soul.”
The Daily Caller has started mimicking a frequent cable-news trick of asking Republicans to react to Trump tweets by calling all Democratic senators to get their reaction to Durbin’s remark. Crickets.
Evidently Scott would be more authentic if he spoke like California’s Kamala Harris, one of two Black Democrats in the Senate, when she touted the Democrats’ Justice in Policing Act of 2020. “America’s sidewalks are stained with Black blood,” Harris said.
She’s so proud of that quote, she has it on her website.
I know Harris wants former Vice President Joe Biden to pick her to be his running mate. What’s scary is that she thinks this is the way to do it.
Democrats now face a choice. They can work with Scott and GOP senators to pass a bill meant to promote community-based policing in a way that encourages civil rights advocates and the police to work together. Or they can vote to keep Scott’s bill from a floor vote because they want to keep their base angry and raw.
Remind you of anyone?