Trump offers full-throated defense of police in executive action signing

President Donald Trump took his first concrete steps on Tuesday to address growing national outcry over police brutality even as he offered a staunch defense of law enforcement that left little question about his allegiances.

Speaking during a discursive noontime event in the Rose Garden, Trump initially sought to adopt a unifying tone as he announced  with a history of using excessive force.

But later he veered from that topic and that tone to assault his political rivals and tout the stock market's recent rally.

It was a performance that laid bare the balance Trump faces as he continues to embrace a hard line "law and order" mantle, which he believes benefits him politically, even as he confronts a national reckoning over systemic racism in police departments and outcry over violent police tactics.

"Reducing crime and raising standards are not opposite goals. They are not mutually exclusive. They work together," Trump said. "They all work together."

In his speech, Trump did not address the racism issue directly. Instead, he suggested the repeated instances of officers killing unarmed black Americans rested on a small number of individual officers.

"They're very tiny. I use the word tiny," he said. "It's a very small percentage. But nobody wants to get rid of them more than the really good and great police officers."

Trump said he was taking executive action to encourage police to adopt the "highest and the strongest" professional standards "to deliver a future of safety and security for Americans of every race, religion, color and creed."

He went on to lambast efforts to defund departments and said police were owed respect for their work, recalling officers who ran into a burning World Trade Center on September 11.

Trump said Americans "demand law and order" and hailed the efforts of law enforcement to quell violence during protests against police brutality earlier this month.

"Without police, there is chaos," Trump said.

Later, Trump veered from a speech about police reform to launch political attacks, falsely claiming that his predecessor Barack Obama, along with his current election rival former Vice President Joe Biden, did not attempt to address police reform issues when they were in office.

He claimed the issue of school choice, long championed by conservatives, was the "civil rights statement of the year, of the decade, and probably beyond."

And he delved into recent stock market rallies and an increase in retail sales as evidence, he claimed, that the economy is restarting after being frozen during the coronavirus pandemic - which he suggested was waning, even as cases increase in parts of the country.

As he concluded his speech, Trump seemed to allude to recent debates over dismantling or banning Confederate statues and symbols, an effort he opposes.

"We must build upon our heritage, not tear it down," Trump said.

Like his efforts to strike a balance between meaningful police reform and supporting law enforcement, the aside about "heritage" was an indication of Trump signaling to his supporters his unchanged position on removing symbols of America's racist history, even as he sought to demonstrate an interest in healing old wounds.

By Al- Helalee