WASHINGTON ― As Republicans ramp up their attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris over her comments about the “defund the police” movement, they remain determined to defend Donald Trump, a convicted felon who is literally saluting violent rioters who beat police officers on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Ironic, isn’t it,” said a Republican National Committee member who spoke on condition of anonymity, noting that Trump has also called for “defunding” federal law enforcement. “He wants to dismantle the FBI.”
Harris, a former prosecutor and later California attorney general, has never endorsed calls to defund entire police departments but has said she supports “rethinking” how much money is spent on police compared to social services in crime-ridden communities. In an interview on June 9, 2020, just days after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, she said that “this whole movement is about rightly saying we need to look at these budgets and figure out if they reflect the right priorities.”
The former coup-plotting president and his allies have worked to scatter those comments to make her seem soft on crime, even though Trump has promised to pardon everyone prosecuted for their actions on January 6, including those who attacked police officers with flagpoles, batons, a baseball bat, pepper spray and even the officers’ own tasers.
“Trump has seen the largest annual increase in homicides in more than a century, has proposed dismantling law enforcement in every budget, and wants to pardon the criminals who violently attacked police officers on January 6,” said Ammar Moussa, a Harris campaign spokesman. “A Donald Trump presidency means more shootings, more deaths, and more criminals like him with easy access to guns.”
Trump began the practice of standing at attention for rioters on Jan. 6 at his March 2023 rally in Waco, Texas. It has since become a hallmark of his rallies: a recording of trapped rioters singing the national anthem, interspersed with Trump’s reading of the Pledge of Allegiance.
Trump campaign officials did not respond to HuffPost questions about whether Trump is reconsidering his pledge to pardon insurrectionists or his honoring of them at his rallies.
Late last year, the former president was charged by federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., and state prosecutors in Georgia with actions related to overturning an election he lost; by federal prosecutors in Florida for refusing to turn over secret documents he took with him to his Palm Beach country club when he left the White House; and by prosecutors in New York for falsifying business records to conceal a hush payment to a porn actress in the days leading up to the 2016 campaign.
He has since been convicted of 34 felonies in the New York case, while the judge’s decision to dismiss the documents case is under appeal. The 14 felonies in Atlanta and the four in Washington are still awaiting trial.
“But he’s still leading, despite everything,” said David Kochel, a Republican consultant from Iowa who has not supported Trump. “Normal rules don’t apply to Donald Trump.”
Other anti-Trump Republicans are not convinced that Trump’s attacks on Harris on law enforcement will work.
“You saw what she said this week about the protesters in Gaza,” said Fergus Cullen, former GOP state chairman in New Hampshire, referring to Harris’s statement condemning pro-Hamas protesters. “She can just go back to her ‘back the blue’ days as a prosecutor and attorney general. The same issue that hurt her in the 2020 primaries will now help her in the general election. And the Dem base will give her carte blanche to campaign as more centrist.”
Jennifer Horn, former chair of the New Hampshire GOP, said she is no longer surprised by what her former party does and says in service of Trump.
“The GOP doesn’t know how to campaign against her. She’s an intelligent, successful, courageous woman ― all the things GOP leaders hate in women,” Horn said.
