Since the progressive idea got off the ground more than two years ago after the police killing of George Floyd, Biden has rejected calls to divest from law enforcement budgets. On Tuesday, Biden drove his message home in a passionate speech from Pennsylvania, pulling a page out of the Republican playbook to accuse the GOP of being soft on crime and abandoning their commitments to law and order.
“When it comes to public safety in this nation, the answer is not ‘defund the police.’ It’s ‘fund the police,’” the president said.
“I’m opposed to defunding the police—I’m also opposed to defunding the FBI,” Biden added. “There is no place in this country, no place, for endangering the lives of law enforcement. No place. None, never, period.”
Biden has long tried to distance the Democratic Party from calls from members of the progressive wing to defund the police. Two weeks after Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, the then-presumptive Democratic presidential nominee told CBS, “I don’t support defunding the police,” adding that he supported federal aid to officers and agencies based on their ability to protect “everybody in the community.”
A year after Biden successfully won the 2020 presidential election, he reaffirmed his stance during his State of the Union address, telling lawmakers, “We should all agree the answer is not to defund the police; it’s to fund the police. Fund them. Fund them.”
But it wasn’t until the unfolding of events at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home this month, alongside a tumultuous midterm cycle for the GOP, that Biden was able to launch an offensive attack on the Republicans.
Russell Fox, a professor of political science at Friends University, told Newsweek that some Republican voters have shifted away from the party amid the congressional hearings on the January 6 Capitol riot and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Gregory Koger, the chair of University of Miami’s political science department, added that Republican attacks on Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, particularly provisions that invest in enforcement of federal tax law, have also contributed to the idea that the GOP is no longer aligned with law enforcement.
Fox said that Biden’s “emphasis on more and better police funding will exploit” the shift among Republican voters and paint “Trump Republicans as people who are so convinced of their righteousness that they can simply disregard the law.”
“The Mar-a-Lago raid definitely, and the anti-FBI statements coming from leading Republicans, feeds into that impression,” he said.
In response to the FBI search in Florida, Trump and his allies, which include congressional leaders, ignited calls to “defund” and “destroy” the federal law enforcement agency—statements that are contrary to their previous efforts to “back the blue.”
Leading primary candidates in Florida and Ohio have called for the FBI agents involved to be arrested and promised to “abolish all unconstitutional three-letter agencies.” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has even begun selling “defund the FBI” merchandise.
In the wake of these attacks on the FBI, threats against law enforcement officials, particularly the federal agency, have surged, reaching levels that haven’t been seen in more than two decades, according to a report from USA Today. The violent threats have drawn condemnation from FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Despite major damage control from top Republicans, the aggressive attacks on the FBI have positioned Biden to turn the tables on crime, which, up until now, had largely been a winning, and important, issue for the GOP. According to a poll conducted by FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos between April and July, one in three Americans said “crime or gun violence” was the country’s most important issue. The only issue that surpassed crime was inflation.
In June, California primary voters, who cast their ballots before the U.S. inflation rate hit a 40-year-high, signaled that Americans are prepared to remove some of the nation’s most progressive elected officials over rising rates of crime, as a recall effort against San Fransisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin won.
Some GOP lawmakers have cautioned that calls to “defund the FBI” do not reflect the vast majority of Republican voters. Speaking to CNN this month, Congressman Dan Crenshaw warned that this type of messaging “makes us seem like extremist Democrats.”
“Ninety-nine percent of Republicans are not on that train,” the Texas Republican said.
Fox said Biden’s “fund the police” remarks will largely target “crime-wary Republicans” who will appreciate the president’s more traditional approach to law and order. They’ll “appreciate it enough to tip the balance when it comes to the [GOP’s] increasingly extreme and above-the-law attitude that some [voters] are beginning to recognize.”
On Tuesday, Biden sent a message to his “MAGA Republican friends,” telling them, “Don’t tell me you support law enforcement, if you won’t condemn what happened” on January 6.
By implicitly connecting that Trump gives licenses to extremists, and that conservatives are sticking with Trump, Biden is warning Americans, months before the midterm election, that rather than actually being a party for law and order, the GOP would rather “attack anyone who dares question them,” Fox explained.
“These attacks on law enforcement provide an opening for Democrats to highlight their own support for investing in law enforcement while ensuring that all Americans are equal before the law,” Koger said.
