Tuesday on CBS’s “Late Show,” Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace argued President Donald Trump had missed opportunities over the last two weeks to engage with the family of George Floyd and civil rights leaders.
Host Stephen Colbert said, “Speaking of the president and his ability or his inability to unite us, there was some talk– and this is sort of– this is reporting sort of from anonymous sources in the White House, that the president and his team had considered giving a speech last week of unity and addressing the racial divide and the use of force by police against black communities in the United States but decided against it because A) it stylistically doesn’t meet the president,’ and also they don’t have concrete proposals to go with it. Now there’s talk of that again. Is it too late, in your opinion, for him to do that? He’s already sort of put his marker down that these people are violent. These people are not real protesters. These people are terrorists.”
Wallace said, “I certainly think that there were plenty of opportunities over the last two weeks where the president, who has come down, you know, very hard on law and order, and even earlier this week, met with law enforcement officials, you know, he hasn’t had civil rights leaders in, he hasn’t had the family of George Floyd in.”
He continued, “He would have had a lot of opportunities to make two points, I think both of which are valid, which is that there are some serious concerns here about policing in African American, minority communities and some of the misconduct that happens there, some of the unequal treatment. You know, you just have to look at Minneapolis, where police are seven times more likely to use force against young black men than they are against young white men. I mean, there are some stats that just indicate it. And he could have done that while at the same time espousing law and order. And he seems— I think this is his instinct that he wanted to accentuate one and not really say very much, a little but not very much about the other.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN