Trump was joined at the rally by the Indiana governor, Mike Pence, a top contender for the vice-presidential nomination. They represent our highest ideals, our greatest values and our most noble characteristics.” The police are the best of our society,” he said. “The police are not just part of our society. On Tuesday in Indiana, Trump used most of his remarks on police dealings with minorities to reiterate his support for law enforcement. Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, will speak before the group on Monday. Previous Republican candidates have addressed the gathering of the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organisation. Trump, overwhelmingly unpopular among African Americans in the polls, has declined an invitation to address the NAACP’s annual convention next week. He also suggested at a rally in November that a Black Lives Matter protester “should have been roughed up”. Through most of his campaign Trump has vehemently defended law enforcement and even shared misleading and racially charged crime data over his Twitter account. The conflicting remarks were indicative of Trump’s struggle to soften his tone as his campaign insists he is capable of pivoting to the general election.ĭespite raising concerns over criminal justice, his rhetoric against Black Lives Matter remains more in line with his aggressive posture on the subject during the Republican primary. “We have to take care of everybody … but we also have to get to the bottom of things. “Was it training, was it something else? Could’ve been something else. “We have to figure it out what’s going on,” he added. “The two people killed in Louisiana and Minnesota, it was tough to watch,” Trump said. He struck a similar note while taking the stump in Indiana on Tuesday evening. Trump criticised the killings of Sterling and Castile as “a terrible, disgusting performance” by police. “I can really relate it very much to myself.” “When I ran for president I could see what is going on with the system, and the system is rigged. “Well, I’ve been saying, even against me the system is rigged,” Trump told O’Reilly. There’s no question about it.”Īsked what he would say to African Americans who feel as though the system was biased against them, Trump drew an analogy with his own campaign. “I think it’s a very, very, very divisive term. “The first time I heard it I said ‘You have to be kidding,’” said Trump. “I think it’s certainly, it’s very divisive and I think they’re hurting themselves,” Trump told Fox News host Bill O’Reilly in reference to the phrase “black lives matter” and the eponymous movement leading national demonstrations for criminal justice reform. But even as he expressed concerns over the police killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, describing videos of the encounters as “tough to watch”, Trump blamed Barack Obama and Black Lives Matter as primarily responsible for divisions over race.
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