Upon returning to the White House after participating in a Wednesday town hall event on CNN, President Joe Biden faced questioning about police issues from conservative reporter Shelby Talcott, who works at the far-right outlet known as The Daily Caller. Talcott seemed to be going with the false idea that opposition to law enforcement is, in fact, a running theme in the actual Democratic Party, asking Biden if he could “clarify” what he said “about that there’s no one in the Democratic Party [who] is anti-police.” Biden apparently did not, in fact, say such a thing, and in response to Talcott, he adeptly dismantled the nonsense.
As President Biden put it, a general opposition to police “is not the Democratic Party’s position. I’m the Democratic Party; I am President. So is the Speaker of the House and so is the Majority Leader. We are not… defunding the police.” In other words, pretending like a push to “defund the police” is an actually guiding principle of the Democratic Party is just not accurate. Sometimes, those who are actually promoting the idea of defunding the police don’t even support the Democratic Party because of its perceived attachment to certain elements of the way things are, so to speak. Accusing — implicitly or otherwise — Biden of broadly backing the idea of “defunding the police” is not based in facts.
Talcott followed up by asking Biden if there are people “in the Democratic Party who want to defund the police.” Biden replied by asking if there are “people in the Republican Party who think we’re sucking the blood out of kids.” His point, of course, was that the positions of individuals within a broader political party are not somehow automatically representative of the party as a whole, because yes — there are people in the Republican Party who have backed deranged nonsense like Biden referenced. The QAnon conspiracy theory involves the ludicrous, nonsensical idea that prominent Democrats are secretly cannibalistic Satan-worshipers. Accusing Democrats of cannibalism is, of course, not a leading precept of the GOP — just like defunding the police is not a leading precept of the Democratic Party, no matter what individuals promote the idea while tied to the party.
Watch Biden’s Wednesday exchange with Talcott in the video below:
This is so fucking epic. I love him. pic.twitter.com/a0teHwBycE
— dyIan 🌐 🇺🇸 (@itsdylan46) July 23, 2021
