New York Times Columnist Rips Biden’s Call ‘To Fund the Police’ as ‘Callous Attempt to Appease The Law-And-Order Crowd’
Charles M. Blow, a New York Times columnist since 2018, tore into President Joe Biden on Wednesday evening after Biden called to fund the police during his State of the Union address this week.
Blow, who served as the Time’s graphics director for nine years, titled his op-ed, “Open Letter to President Biden From a Dispirited Black Voter.”
Blow started off by calling out Biden for what he sees as a flip-flop, writing, “What a difference 300 days makes.”
Blow quotes from Biden’s April 2021 speech to a joint session of Congress, in which the president “made an impassioned moral case for police reform.”
He quotes Biden at length, noting the president said at the time:
“My fellow Americans, we have to come together to rebuild trust between law enforcement and the people they serve, to root out systemic racism in our criminal justice system and enact police reform in George Floyd’s name that passed the House already.”
Blow then concludes, “Well, in the 307 days between that speech and your State of the Union on Tuesday, you performed a political pirouette and ended up facing the opposite direction.”
He quotes Biden’s State of the Union to illustrate his argument:
“We should all agree: The answer is not to defund the police. It’s to fund the police. Fund them. Fund them. Fund them with resources and training. Resources and training they need to protect their communities. I ask Democrats and Republicans alike to pass my budget and keep our neighborhoods safe.”
“This feels like a callous attempt to appease the law-and-order crowd,” Blow writes, echoing a sentiment from the left-wing of the Democratic Party. “Policing has not fundamentally changed over the past year,” adds Blow.
Rep. Cory Bush (D-MO) responded to Biden with a similar sentiment, writing on Twitter Tuesday night:
With all due respect, Mr. President. You didn’t mention saving Black lives once in this speech.
All our country has done is given more funding to police. The result? 2021 set a record for fatal police shootings.
Defund the police. Invest in our communities.
Blow did acknowledge, however, that crime continues to be a major across the country, writing, “Maybe policing shouldn’t be starved, but it definitely shouldn’t be fattened.”
He then turned the discussion to issues he sees as facing the Black community in the U.S. – a voting block that was key in Biden winning both the Democratic Party nomination and the general election in 2020.
Blow invoked former President Barack Obama in 2008 praising Biden for helping to pass the 1994 crime bill and “starting an eight-year drop in crime across the country.”
“Your comments Tuesday highlighted how many Democrats are retreating from the very idea of police reform and the pursuit of racial justice in the criminal justice system,” Blow argued, apparently taking issue with Obama’s praise of Biden.
Blow continued noting his frustration that in our “two-party system, Black people are stuck.” He then offered the faintest of praise for Democrats, saying, “You, Mr. President, are the best and only option when the Republicans have declared war on truth, Black history and Black voters and sworn allegiance to Donald Trump.”
