President Donald Trump kicked off a roundtable meeting with police supporters this afternoon saying that he is "pro police, pro safety, and anti-crime."
The event called the "Red, White, and the Blue" was held in the White House. Guests included a Berkeley County, SC, sheriff's deputy and a Palm Beach County, FL, sheriff's deputy. Both deputies were praised for their quick response in helping people in trouble. The people the deputies helped were also present at the event along with other people who have been "positively impacted" by law enforcement.
The president praised the officers in attendance and discussed the incidents of positive impact by law enforcement with the people who had been helped. Each attendee told their stories.
Their experiences included the rescue of a child who was no longer breathing, the intervention of an off-duty deputy in an attack on a woman and her child, an off-duty officer who expedited emergency response to a near fatal car wreck, and other stories of police professionalism.
In the most harrowing story, a woman told the president about her daughter who had been trafficked by the gang MS-13 for more than a year and how she was rescued by law enforcement.
A Democrat member of the Georgia House of Representative also took part in the discussion. He previously served as a county executive and said he has been tasked with speaking with families who have lost loved ones to police shootings and with the families of officers killed in the line of duty. Answering the defund police movement, he said, "Law enforcement needs more funding, not less."
The Democrat representative, who is African American, said that most people want police to enforce the law and that includes African Americans. "They just want it done fairly," he said. The representative also slammed the Black Lives Matter protesters for caring more about some black lives than others, and he referenced the eight-year-old girl who was shot and killed in Atlanta last week when the car she was riding in turned into a parking lot occupied by protesters.
Trump said he couldn't believe that some people want to defund or disband law enforcement agencies at a time when the murder rate is soaring in many cities, including Atlanta, Chicago, and New York.
"Things are happening that we have never seen before," the president said. He added that the carnage in America' most liberal cities makes even Afghanistan look "tame" by comparison. Trump warned that if the violence continues he would send federal officers in "to take over." He said that he has offered to send federal help to several liberal mayors and they have all declined the assistance.
