The White House is maintaining their position that Republicans are the ones that are looking to defund the police, saying Tuesday that President Joe Biden campaigned on and won the 2020 election due in part to his pro-police stance.
Jabs at former President Donald Trump were also taken as the White House press team said that he looked to reduce law enforcement resources while Biden looked to increase police funding.
"The President ran and won on a platform of increasing funding for law enforcement, against an opponent who not only spent his entire term attempting to cut the COPS program - with the support of congressional Republicans - but who also blocked critical resources needed to prevent the laying off of police officers at a time of rising crime," White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates told Fox News.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki this week criticized Republicans for being anti-police, telling reporters that the Republican Party is the one defunding police after no Republicans voted in favor of the American Rescue Plan that was signed into law back in March despite it allocating $350 billion in funds for state and local governments that she said could use it for police resources.
Absolutely shameless. Under questioning from Fox's Peter Doocy, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki argues it's *Republicans* who have been defunding the police and not supporting law enforcement because they didn't vote for Biden's stimulus boondoggle the American Rescue Plan. pic.twitter.com/pIwfFkonu1
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) June 28, 2021
Psaki's critique was echoed by Bates, who said that the GOP's opposition to the American Rescue Plan was evidence that Republicans looked to cut police resources while Democrats made efforts to provide more resources for local law enforcement.
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"The President, with the backing of leading law enforcement groups, secured the money that his predecessor opposed - to keep cops on the beat - and every single Republican member of Congress voted against it," Bates said. "They continue to oppose the American Rescue Plan even as it delivers the rehiring of police in their districts."
"The President is also fulfilling his campaign promise of fighting for hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding for the COPS program, as a central element of a comprehensive approach to the higher crime rates he inherited, alongside addressing gun violence directly, implementing prevention programs and dealing with root causes," he continued.
Following former Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin killing George Floyd in May 2020 that prompted months of anti-police protests in cities across the country, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party has pushed for efforts to defund the police while Republicans continued to support law enforcement.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said last summer that she supports cutting down on law enforcement presence and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) stated she was a supporter of defunding police.
In the Democrats' most recent effort to defund police, as Townhall previously reported, the city of Oakland has cut $17 million from their police budget.
Biden, who chose a law enforcement official in Kamala Harris as his running mate, was not primarily anti-cop on the 2020 campaign trail, but his presidential run was not largely based on his support for law enforcement and he was inconsistent at times on proposals of police funding.
In June 2020, shortly after Floyd's death, Biden rejected the idea that the police should be defunded and instead proposed that $300 million in federal funds should be given to law enforcement. But in a July 2020 interview with activist Ady Barkan, Biden said that some police funding ought to be redirected.
Biden then resorted back to separating himself from progressive Democrats who bluntly stated that they wanted police defunded or abolished as Black Lives Matter protests took the country by storm.
When asked in August 2020 if he supported defunding the police, the president told ABC News that he did not and then proceeded to detail his plan for supporting local law enforcement.
After becoming president, Biden maintained his stance that the police should not have their funding slashed despite calls from other Democrats to strip law enforcement of funding over incidents of racial minorities being killed by cops in the last year.
However, his inconsistencies were outlined again after nominating Kristen Clarke and Vanita Gupta to the Department of Justice. Clarke and Gupta have both been vocal supporters of defunding the police.
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