Donald Trump, in an interview broadcast Tuesday, turned around when asked a question about the police murder of George Floyd, a black American, which sparked major national protests, to point out that police in the United States also kill whites. .
In a controversial moment that echoed his comments about white nationalist and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, when he said there were “good people from both sides,” the president did not take the opportunity to speak on the issue of Racially motivated police brutality on Tuesday, but changed to talk about white victims.
He then inaccurately argued that white Americans die more often at the hands of the police than black Americans.
Trump was asked about the issue in an interview with Catherine Herridge of CBS News.
She began: “Let’s talk about George Floyd, you said that George Floyd’s death was a terrible thing.”
“Terrible,” said Trump.
Then Herridge followed with, “Why do African Americans continue to die at the hands of law enforcement?”
The President turned immediately.
“And also the whites. White people too, “Trump said in response.” What a terrible question to ask. That’s what white people are like. More white people by the way. More white people.
Herridge’s question came after weeks of protests as a result of Floyd’s murder as police tried to arrest him in Minneapolis in May. His death was filmed by a member of the public as passers-by held in line as they pleaded with officers to stop holding Floyd, who was begging for his life and saying, “I can’t breathe.”
The officers were fired, but only later arrested and charged, and the murder sparked huge protests in US towns and cities, and prompted urgent calls for lawmakers and activists to make radical police reform. There has still been minimal reform, amid renewed debate and a revived Black Lives Matter movement in the US and internationally.
Trump’s claim that the police murder more white people in the US is misleading.
The Guardian The Counted research project in 2015-2016, which set out to register all people killed by the police in the U.S., showed that blacks in America were more than twice as likely to be killed by the police than whites.
And in 2016, black men ages 15 to 34 were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by law enforcement officers, and they were killed at a rate four times higher than young white men.
A similar analysis conducted in 2016 by The Washington Post also found that African Americans are 2.5 times more likely to be shot to death by police than white Americans.
Another study published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2018 found that African Americans are 3.5 times more likely to be killed by police compared to whites.
At the height of protests over Floyd’s death, Trump repeatedly framed him more as fabricated violence against police and law enforcement officials fueled by Democrats, anti-fascist radicals and their political opponents. He focused most of his criticism on attempts to tear down Confederate monuments and rename military bases in honor of Confederate generals.
Even when Republican and Democratic lawmakers in Mississippi worked together to replace the state flag with one that does not include the Confederate insignia, Trump has argued that the flag is not offensive to African Americans or a symbol of black oppression.
“Well, people love it, and I know people who like the Confederate flag, and they don’t think about slavery,” Trump said in the same interview.
He also criticized the ban on the Confederate flag at Nascar auto racing events and scorned the veracity of a rope found in Bubba Wallace’s garage, prompting a federal investigation and a response from Wallace calling for “love over hate” after The President attacked him.
