In the wake of deadly violence seen across the weekend following protests against racial injustice that have called to defund police departments, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Monday called on Democratic local leaders to “step up” to help stop the violence.
President Donald Trump over the weekend offered federal assistance, and on Monday he urged the local leaders to change their “ways” and “thinking.”
McEnany said on Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom” that Trump finds the violence “unacceptable” and asked where is the outrage for the victims, some of them just children, of the violence.
“The president sees this as unacceptable,” McEnany stated. “Look, the pain on that mother’s face — that was really hard to watch, to think that five children were killed this weekend doing everything every day things like going to the mall and in the car with their mother. This is happening across America, and it’s unacceptable. And what the president has done is his DOJ under his leadership has been aggressively looking at prosecutions. More than that we’ve had federal protective services that have been in the states as a backup to local law enforcement. Ultimately, it’s the responsibility of state governors and mayors who have the police power to patrol their streets as ascribed in the Constitution, but the president has been doing everything on our part from the federal side to say this is unacceptable and it’s time for these Democrat mayors and governors to step up because no mother should have to experience the pain that I just saw on that mother’s face.”
“Where is the outrage for these victims?” she continued. “And in fact, what you’re seeing is when you have this outspoken attitude against police, this defund of the police movement, $1 billion taken from the police department in New York, … you see a pulling back of law enforcement. We’ve seen those mass retirements in New York that ultimately leads to the kind of violence that we see in the streets. I mean, we saw in LA when there was an announcement about funding being pulled from LAPD, we saw an increase in homicides, it was over 100% increase. So, there are real consequences. We need outrage for these victims and for these horrid incidences of violence that we are seeing that should not be taking place in our streets.”
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