When a White House press secretary gives a press briefing, you expect spin. You expect some verbal bobbing and weaving if the topic is unflattering to the administration. But when Jen Psaki blamed Republicans for defunding the police last week, it wasn’t spin – it was gaslighting.
Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked Psaki about senior adviser to the president Cedric Richmond’s claim that Republicans have defunded the police by not voting to pass Biden’s American Rescue Plan. Psaki defended Richmond, doubling down on the idea that Republicans, and not Democrats, have defunded the police.
That’s like an arsonist showing up as the fire’s blazing and blaming the firemen; it’s the like the Chinese Communist Party blaming America for the Wuhan virus; it’s like O.J. saying he’s going to help find the real killer. It’s absurd, it’s ridiculous, and Democrats know it.
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Let’s look at the facts.
Democrats have called to defund the police for over a year and have been successful in doing it.
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New York Mayor Bill de Blasio last summer pledged to cut the NYPD budget by $1 billion, and New York City passed a budget that did indeed cut $1 billion from the police department. Just a couple of months ago de Blasio realized what a terrible decision that was because he’s now working to reverse it.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has said “defunding the police means defunding the police” and “the fight to defund the police continues.” Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., has called for “no more policing,” Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., said “you can’t really reform a department that is rotten to the root,” and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., introduced legislation to defund police officers in public schools and has said that defunding the police is “about true reparations.”
And you want to know what Joe Biden thinks about defunding the police? Look no further than two of the people he nominated to senior positions at the Department of Justice, Vanita Gupta and Kristen Clarke.
Gupta wrote, “Some people call it ‘defunding the police,’ other people call it ‘divest-invest,’ but whatever you call it, if you care about mass incarceration, you have to care about skewed funding priorities.” Clarke wrote last year that a “unifying call” had emerged from the Black Lives Matter movement to defund the police.
The facts are Democrats have repeatedly called to defund the police and have done so in many cities.
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