In a supreme case of gaslighting an upcoming interview has the Dems laughably desperate.

This could be the eyeroll heard across the country. ABC News has a new interview with the Democratic candidates Kamala Harris and her running mate set to be broadcast tomorrow, and in a preview just released the outlandishness is at a high level. The pair sat with Robin Roberts for an interview airing Sunday at 8pm, and get ready for the mirth.

For months we have seen the protests and riots leading to calls to have the police defunded from the Black Lives Movement. The press has been anywhere between complacent to supportive of the idea, and democrats sensing a political opportunity have given tacit-to-vocal backing. Even in recent months Biden himself has refrained from being too critical, or not critical at all, of the concept of states and cities defunding their police programs.

Now that Joe has become the de facto head of the party this week he is suddenly taking a new stance on the matter, as he makes the expected pander to centrists. Except his appeal to more moderate voters with this new position is distancing more than drawing in. After long months of riots and upheaval which have been intertwined with calls to remove police forces from cities it is almost impossible to come up with a suggestion that the Trump administration is behind the push.

The claim being made here is a tenuous one at best, one put forth by Vox months back as a means of dampening the negative reaction towards the BLM calls to defund. The Trump administration has made changes to a broad range of budgetary targets, some of which involve federal funding to municipalities for police. Much of this has to do with austerity measures in response to the fiscal shortfalls created by the pandemic response. 

Even in its desperate report Vox had to admit the reality, and how it is a far cry from either cutting back or eliminating police outright.

And even though polling shows the idea of cutting police funding to be unpopular, realistically, states and cities facing huge budget holes are going to need to ask police departments to share in some of the pain. This dispute about budgeting…is different from the theoretical argument police abolitionists want to have about the future of law enforcement. But it’s a real one playing out this summer in Congress with real consequences for the lives of hundreds of millions of people. 

In other words, technically – yes – you can say Trump is cutting police budgets…as numerous other budgets are also being cut at the same time, out of necessity. This is a far cry from suggesting that Trump is targeting police forces to be defunded. The biggest spending slash is in a support program to help local governments in hiring new police officers. That actually truncates expansion, it is not a cut in current operations. This shows the desperation in the charge.

Vox goes on to mention a House bill that was intended to send hundreds of billions to states that the GOP members have held back, suggesting alternatives for states operating a deficit. This is the tried practice of saying that anytime you propose a lower increase in spending it becomes demonized as a ‘’cut’’.

But if Biden wants to reach to this level of showing Trump is defunding cops he ends up unravelling his own claims of being a staunch fiscal backer of the police. The Trump campaign notes that Biden’s own record on this budgetary proof shows he too is a slasher of police funding.

“Federal support for state and local law enforcement under the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program fell by hundreds of millions of dollars” while Joe Biden was VP, “despite a pledge to maintain full funding, records show” https://t.co/MZrnxT5DTf

— Trump War Room – Text TRUMP to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) August 21, 2020

But this new lurch from Kamala and Biden has another built-in pratfall. The pair now calling for more financial backing of police in an attempted hit on Trump is not likely to win over a net gain in voters. Few on the right would be motivated by this, but there is now a vocal contingent on the left who are angry to hear the ticket taking a stand in opposition to the growing movement opposing police.

This has become a lose/lose policy issue for the campaign – and the interview has not even been broadcast yet.