Trump downplays police violence against blacks
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday praised US police departments and downplayed police violence against black people, saying “more white people” are killed by police officers.
During a CBS News interview, the Republican president was asked why black people were still dying at the hands of law enforcement.
“And so are white people, so are white people. What a terrible question to ask. So are white people. More white people, by the way. More white people,” Trump responded.
The 25 May death of African-American George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis sparked protests across the United States and has led to an increased focus on US police violence against black people.
According to a Washington Post analysis updated on Monday, half of people killed by police are white, but Black Americans are shot at a disproportionate rate.
They account for less than 13% of the US population but are killed by police at over twice the rate of white Americans, the newspaper analysis found.
Some Americans argue that the Black Lives Matter protests have unfairly maligned the police forces.
Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House, defended police departments, saying they “do an incredible job in this country”.
“You can have a rogue, terrible cop, on occasion like you do in any industry, any business, in any profession,” Trump added.
The American Civil Liberties Union’s Jeffery Robinson said in a statement in response that Trump’s comments were racist.
“Trump’s racism is so absolute that he continues to refuse to give even a tacit acknowledgment to the epidemic of police violence against black people in America,” he said.
Recent social unrest has raised new questions about the flying of the Confederate battle flag in areas of the country and whether statues honouring Confederate leaders during the US Civil War should be removed from prominent places.
Meanwhile,
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said on Monday that US President Donald Trump was telling “baldfaced lies” about voting by mail to distract from his own failures, after Trump last week suggested it could be cause to delay the election.
Biden’s remarks were his strongest on the issue since Trump, who trails the presumptive Democratic nominee in opinion polls, tweeted on Thursday that he would not trust the results of an election that included widespread mail voting — a measure many observers see as critical during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Trump then suggested the 3 November vote could be postponed, an idea immediately rejected by Democrats and his fellow Republicans in Congress — the sole branch of government with the authority to make such a change.
Speaking during a virtual campaign fundraiser on Monday, Biden said he believed Trump would do everything in his power to “argue this election is fraudulent”.
“He suggested we should postpone the election, full of just bald-faced lies about how mail-in votes were fraud, and how it was so terrible,” Biden said.
“Well look, he’s calling out any effort to exploit this pandemic for political purposes. It distracts from his complete failure,” he said.
Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said the president was “rightfully calling attention to the clear fact” that universal mail-in voting creates “nightmare election scenarios”.
“Joe Biden and the radical left are fearmongering as they capitalise on the coronavirus crisis in an effort to scare voters into staying home on election day,” Murtaugh said.
Trump said on Monday that he has the right to issue an executive order on mail-in voting, and he vowed to sue Nevada over a new law that would send mail-in ballots to every voter ahead of the presidential election.
The United States is enduring a coronavirus pandemic that has claimed more than 155 000 lives — the most of any country in the world — a crippling recession sparked by the outbreak, and nationwide protests against police violence and racism. — AFP