DON’S ‘FINEST’ BLUNDER YET
Rants NYC fired cops, but it did not; says he’s shocked Joe picked Kamala
President Trump, painting New York City as a hellscape beset by crime, called on Mayor de Blasio to rehire cops who he says were “fired without justification.”
In what was supposed to be a press briefing about COVID-19 vaccines, Trump flipped the script and implored the mayor to instruct the NYPD to reinstate its recently shuttered anti-crime unit during his politicized rant on crime, police and Democratic-controlled cities. The only problem is those officers were simply reassigned, not fired.
“You have excellent police and law enforcement, but you have to let them do their job,” the president said during an evening press briefing at the White House. “The mayor Bill de Blasio should immediately hire back all the police who were fired without justification. They were fired, I guess that’s part of ‘Defund the Police’ by the Democrats.”
The NYPD anti-crime unit was shut down in June amid protests sparked by the death of George Floyd. Its roughly 600 plainclothes officers were reassigned to other divisions.
Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said at the time that the unit saw a disproportionate number of shootings and complaints.
“New York City has an army of great police, I know them very well,” Trump said. “And the law enforcement and New York’s Finest are as good as it gets and they should be allowed to do their job. If they’re allowed to do their job the New York City problem would be solved and solved quickly. They do it well.”
Trump has sent hundreds of federal law enforcement officers into Democratic-run cities in recent weeks including Chicago and Portland, Ore., following protests against police brutality and racism. The mobilization, which has drawn condemnation from civil liberties groups and others, has not made it to New York as of yet.
De Blasio responded by saying that Trump is simply trying to distract from the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.
“@realDonaldTrump is making stuff up about America’s cities because he wants you to forget that he’s cutting Social Security, Medicare and unemployment during a pandemic,” he tweeted. “We’re not falling for it. Pass a stimulus.”
The president, after providing a brief update on the coronavirus crisis, spent much of his remaining time in the briefing room castigating Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), who was named hours earlier as Democrat Joe Biden’s running mate, calling her “my No. 1 draft pick.”
“She did very very poorly in the primaries. So I was a little surprised that he picked her,” Trump said, before accusing Harris of being a liar, overtly liberal and “nasty.”
“She is a person that has told many stories that weren’t true. She very big into raising taxes, she wants to slash funds for our military at a level that nobody can even believe,” the president claimed. “She’s in favor of socialized medicine, where you’re going to lose your doctors, lose your plan.”