The Trump Administration Should Stop Pretending They Care About Social Justice
By: Executive Tea Staff
The Trump administration is fake AF and it shows.
This Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order touted as the White House’s commitment to police reform. In the speech, he did not mention racism once. Here’s a breakdown of what the executive order calls for:
Give police departments a financial incentive to adopt best practices and encourage co-responder programs
A federal ban on chokeholds except in situations where the officer’s life is in danger
Establish a national database that tracks police officers with excessive use-of-force complaints
That’s literally it. The executive order seriously falls short of demands made by protestors across the country. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded to the executive order on Twitter.
The President’s Executive Order falls seriously short of what is required to combat the epidemic of racial injustice & police brutality that is murdering Black Americans. We must insist on the bold change found in the George Floyd #JusticeInPolicing Act. https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/61620
Pelosi Statement on Trump Executive Order on Policing
The President’s weak Executive Order falls sadly and seriously short of what is required to combat the epidemic of racial injustice and police brutality that is murdering hundreds of Black Americans....
speaker.gov
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If that wasn’t enough, Trump introduced the order with a lengthy praise of police officers and condemned peaceful protestors.
Nobody needs a strong, trustworthy police force more than those who live in distressed areas, and nobody is more opposed to the small number of bad police officers — and you have them, they’re a very tiny, I use the word ‘tiny,’ it’s a very small percentage, but you have them...Nobody wants to get rid of them more than the overwhelming number of really good and great police officers, some of which are standing with me and are in the audience today.
— Donald Trump
This isn’t surprising, of course - we can’t expect too much from a man who tear-gassed peaceful protestors for a photo-op.
Trump’s failure to use today’s executive order as an opportunity to call out racism isn’t a mistake, it is intentional. Throughout his speech, Trump repeatedly referenced to “law and order”, the Reagan-era mantra that we all know is a loud whistle to continue criminalizing Black folk.
Trump and his administration have spent the past couple of weeks bad-mouthing protestors and refusing to acknowledge systemic racism exists. To make today’s press conference even more inflammatory, he even lied about meeting with the family of Antown Rose. In a Facebook post published Tuesday, Rose’s mother cleared the air and said she did not meet with #YALLSPresident.
While the Trump administration continues to fight for the black vote - they only won eight percent of it in 2016 - they continue to struggle with authenticity. You can try to win us over with scripted talking points and lies, but at the end of the day, it will never work. You’ll always be fake and we know it.