Trump gets it wrong on killings
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday that “more white people” die at the hands of police, despite studies that show Black people are more likely to be killed by law enforcement.
In an interview at the White House, CBS News’ Catherine Herridge brought up George Floyd, a Black man who died pleading for breath earlier this year as a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck.
“Why are African Americans still dying at the hands of law enforcement in this country?” Herridge asked.
“So are white people. So are white people,” Trump replied. “What a terrible question to ask. So are white people. More white people, by the way. More white people.”
Black people are killed in police encounters at higher rates than white people, multiple studies have confirmed. Black men are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white men, according to a University of Michigan, Rutgers University and Washington University study released last year. The study found that about 100 Black men and boys per 100,000, and 39 white men and boys per 100,000, are killed by police during their lifetimes.
A Harvard analysis of deaths by police from 2013-2017 and published last month found Black men are more than three times more likely than white men to be killed by police.
By numbers alone, a Washington Post analysis found that in about five years of police shooting data, 2,495 white people, 1,301 Black people and 907 Hispanic people were shot and killed by police. For white people, that number is 13 per million; for Black people, it is 31 per million; and for Hispanic people it is 23 per million.
Trump’s assertion that “more white people” are killed by police than Black people is true only when the proportion of those killed to the overall population of white and Black people in the country
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is not taken into account.
During the interview, Trump also defended displays of the Confederate flag as “freedom of speech.” Protesters and public officials across the country are calling for the removal of Confederate symbols like statues of Confederate leaders in public places.
Trump told Herridge that people who love the Confederate flag are “not thinking about slavery,” citing NASCAR fans who displayed the flag before its ban at events as an example.
“All I say is freedom of speech. It’s very simple. My attitude is, freedom of speech. Very strong views on the Confederate flag. With me, it’s freedom of speech. Very simple. Like it, don’t like it, it’s freedom of speech,” Trump told CBS.
“I just think it’s freedom of speech ... whether it’s Confederate flags or Black Lives Matter or anything else you want to talk about. It’s freedom of speech,” Trump said.
Also Tuesday, Trump transformed a Rose Garden event that was supposed to highlight his China policy into an impromptu campaign rally, delivering an expansive and often meandering broadside against Democratic rival Joe Biden on trade, policing and his son’s business practices, among other topics.
The Republican president traded the arena-style rallies he favors for the sundrenched heat of the typically apolitical White House Rose Garden. And instead of a raucous crowd, Trump spent more than an hour Tuesday speaking in front of reporters.
Relenting to the urgent pleas of his political advisers to try to alter a campaign that has been upended by the coronavirus, Trump spent more than an hour framing the November election as the starkest choice in the nation’s history.
“There’s probably never been a time when candidates are so different,” Trump said. “We could go on for days.”
It was a framing Biden himself embraces. Since the early days of his campaign, Biden has sought to portray himself as an empathetic, competent counter to the turbulence of Trump’s administration.
The contrast was on display Tuesday when Biden unveiled the latest of a series of policy proposals, this one a $2 trillion plan to tackle climate change.
Trump seized on the plan to argue that it would make the U.S. “noncompetitive” with the rest of the world.
That was part of a broader effort to argue that Biden, who ran a relatively centrist campaign for the Democratic nomination, has become captive to the most progressive voices in his party.
“Biden’s gone radical left,” Trump said, lumping his rival in with firebrands like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-cortez, particularly on the environment.
“As vice president, Biden was a leading advocate of the Paris climate accord, which was unbelievably expensive to our country,” Trump said. “It would have crushed American manufacturers while allowing China to pollute the atmosphere with impunity, yet one more gift from Biden to the Chinese Communist Party.”
He then delivered attack after attack against Biden on issues from energy to the economy, education to immigration. He drew heavily from the recommendations of the Joe Biden-bernie Sanders Unity Task Force, in which Sanders, the runner-up for the Democratic nomination, secured key liberal policy proposals as Biden looked to strengthen his appeal to Sanders’ supporters before Nov. 3.
“The Biden-sanders agenda is the most extreme platform of any major party nominee by far,” Trump said, suggesting it was “worse actually” than Sanders’ own as a candidate.
Trump’s comments came during a news conference called ostensibly to discuss his actions against China after it moved last month to undermine the autonomy of Hong Kong.
Information from The Associated Press was included in this story.