President Joe Biden accused some Republicans of attempting to defund police agencies in a major flip of a GOP attack against Democrats during an event this week.
The president argued that Republicans who backed the Make America Great Again (MAGA) platform wanted to reduce funding for police departments after several years of efforts among some Democrats to reduce funding for or abolish law enforcement.
The president spoke during an event in Philadelphia, saying that “MAGA Republicans are calling for defunding the police department and defunding the FBI now.”
A number of Republicans called for major changes to the FBI following the 2022 raid on former President Donald Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago. These Republicans believe that the raid on the president’s home was an abuse of power and unprecedented.
The FBI raid on Trump's home tells us one thing.
Failure is not an option.
We must destroy the FBI.
We must save America.
I stand with Donald J. Trump.
— Rep. Paul Gosar, DDS (@RepGosar) August 9, 2022
The president’s words run counter to Republican accusations that Democrats desire to reduce police funding. In the 2020 campaign and in the three years since a number of Democratic candidates called for defunding the police.
Furthermore, during the 2020 protests following the death of George Floyd, many Democrats and left-wing activists called for a reduction in spending on police departments or even the outright abolition of police.
Many of the calls to defund the police came from Democratic politicians linked to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). In 2021, a political group linked to the New York Democrat backed a candidate that called for the abolition of police.
The call to abolish the police was so strong from Ocasio-Cortez that in 2020 she accused the Democratic Party of attempting to water down calls to abolish the police. Vice President Kamala Harris lauded efforts in Los Angeles to reduce funding for its police department during the 2020 campaign.
