Democrats might have been elected by those seeking to defund the police last year, but now those elected officials are doing the opposite: funding the police to combat rising violent crime they expect to continue to rise into the summer.
"After months of ignoring ongoing crime in American cities, the president finally addressed the violence this week," House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said Friday, adding Republicans "will not defund the police. We will add more."
President Joe Biden's March coronavirus stimulus permitted federal funds to be used to fund police departments and the administration this week promoted that, according to the Director of White House Office of Public Engagement Cedric L. Richmond.
That comes as the White House is expecting the rising rates of violent crime to continue into the summer, an official told The Washington Post.
"Prominent voices on the left — including some of our colleagues — fanned the flames of a dangerously misguided experiment, and law-abiding Americans are paying the price," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on the Senate floor Thursday.
Richmond called painting Democrats as defunders of police "BS," but some Democrats are open in a mea culpa.
"'Defund police' is a phrase that I wish had never been uttered," Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., the wife of a sheriff, told the Post. "We've got to do a better job of talking about what we do want to do."
Moderate Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., now one of the more critical voices for the party amid a 50-50 Senate, tweeted: "Defund the police? Defund, my butt."
Republicans will still have some voices calling for defunding the police in the Democratic Party, including former Black Lives Matter activist Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., who tweeted earlier this month:
"Manchin & Co. be like 'defund the police costs us elections' while actively sabotaging our Dem agenda. Our movement was at the heart of the organizing that won us the 2020 elections. Now conservative Dems block our progress."
The White House's Richmond called Republicans "weak on crime" for voting against a Jan. 6 Commission and urged Democrats to be better in their messaging.
"I think that Democratic candidates need to talk about what they want to do, and not necessarily in slogan language," he told the Post.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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