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Surreal New WH Talking Point: Actually, Republicans are the 'Defund the Police' Party

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  June 29, 2021 1:05 PM

Some political talking points are so utterly ludicrous on their face that they hardly require a rebuttal. We've found one such example, courtesy of the Biden White House and the Democratic Party. It goes something like this: Because congressional Republicans voted against a party-line "COVID relief" bill earlier this year – which was incredibly wasteful and counter-productive to our national recovery in significant ways – they, not Democrats, are the true party of "defunding the police." Why? Because that mammoth spending spree, representing the first partisan anti-Coronavirus federal spending of the pandemic, allocated a fraction of its dollars to local law enforcement under massively over-generous bailouts of state and local governments, including jurisdictions that boasted large annual surpluses and didn't need federal help. Facing political headwinds and a crime spike, the Democratic brain trust has evidently landed on a laughably lame rejoinder. Good luck with this one, team: 


"Lol," observes Megyn Kelly, succinctly summarizing the proper response to this. It seems like a joke, but it looks like they're actually going with it: 


Just so we're crystal clear, there's a serious violent crime wave underway in major American cities, nearly every single one of which is run by Democrats. Here are some murder statistics: 


AOC calls this "hysteria," while insisting the police must be literally defunded. The White House says "defund the police" is both a right-wing lie and a GOP policy. Which is it? Well, let's see. Deep blue Portland has reduced police funding, abolished an effective unit, and just saw an entire anti-riot division resign in protest (this play in three acts is quite a read). Deep blue Minneapolis' city council voted to abolish and "reimagine" the police, sending cops heading for the exits and the city scrambling to reverse course amid soaring crime. Philadelphia and Los Angeles have elected left-wing District Attorneys who seem intent on taking the "enforcement" out of law enforcement. Los Angeles also stripped away police funds. New York's preening mayor proposed budget cuts for cops, under pressure from fellow left-wing activists. Chicago has barred police from pursuing suspects who run under certain circumstances. Scores of officers are leaving jurisdictions – from Seattle to Atlanta to smaller cities – where they are treated like the enemy by activists and craven, pandering, beholden politicians alike. All of this is coming from the political Left.

It's a waste of time and energy, frankly, to cite example after example of leftists demanding the police be defunded, their funding "redirected" or their roles "reimagined." It's been ubiquitous. Anyone who's been awake for the last year understands what's happening and who's pushing it. There's been a very high-profile battle within the Democratic Party over defunding the police, especially after the chaos of last summer and after the "defund" crowd voices ended up costing the party congressional seats in the 2020 election. Countless pieces have been written about what the slogan does or should mean. The instances of Democrats and leftists calling for some form of police abolishment or defunding are endless. In the interests of obliterating this particularly galling program of gaslighting, here are just a few: 


I'm sure it's frustrating for Democrats who oppose defunding the police – or "reallocating" police funds, which was much more of a consensus Democratic position until the results became politically toxic – to see Republicans successfully raising crime as a campaign issue. But it's impossible for a political party to claim that their opponents are lying about a major vulnerability when very prominent voices within said political party have loudly and frequently confirmed the alleged lie. Democrats writ large may be divided on defunding the police, with leaders backpedaling away from the electorally-poisonous idea as furiously as possible, but the entire "defund the police" movement exists within Democratic and left-wing politics. Everyone knows it. And whoever summoned the galaxy brain idea to try to reframe this as a Republican problem probably deserves to be personally defunded via job loss. More effective than any flashback clips or rebuttal links, however, is this sequence of events that took place just within the last few days, in one of the nation's most left-wing cities. Republicans aren't even in the power conversation in Oakland, California, which just thrilled leftist activists by cutting police funding by millions of dollars, sending the cash elsewhere, including to "arts and culture" causes: 

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The city made this decision in the midst of spiking crime, over impassioned objections from law enforcement leadership: 

"We find ourselves in a crisis. We find ourselves reeling from a weekend of violence where we have seen four homicides over a three-day period. It now has us currently at 65 homicides for the year - that's a 90 percent increase compared to last year."

As for what happened next, if it were written in a script, it might've been panned by critics as too hand-handed or on-the-nose. Just amazing: 

Two armed robbers held up a television news crew that was interviewing Oakland's director of violence prevention outside City Hall on Monday afternoon, just hours after the police chief warned of worsening crime amid cuts to the police budget. Oakland police reported that the two suspects approached the newscasters at 3:09 p.m. and tried to steal a camera. After a scuffle, a security officer pulled out a gun and ordered the suspects to leave. They fled without the camera. No injuries were reported. A statement from the Police Department described the incident but did not identify Guillermo Cespedes, head of the city’s Department of Violence Prevention, as a victim.

The left-wing city council defunded the police. The police cited big surges in crimes and murders in opposing the move. Within hours, a news crew was assaulted by armed criminals in the middle of an interview with the city's "director of violence prevention." In broad daylight. Just as the Democratic White House rolled out its preposterous "actually, Republicans did this" messaging strategy. Slow clap, everyone.