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Former President Trump condemned the brutal murder of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols after five Memphis Police officers pepper sprayed and beat him.
“I thought it was terrible. He was in such trouble. He was just being pummeled. Now that should never have happened,” Trump said during an interview with the Associated Press.
In the video footage that was released on Friday, Nichols can be heard repeatedly crying out to for his mother and pleading with the men to let him go saying “I didn’t do anything.” Trump said that this part of the footage was particularly hard for him to hear.
“That was really the point that got me the most, to be honest with you," Trump continued.
The former president suggested that a simple traffic violation was not the motive for the five cops to attack Nichols, adding that the video footage is “pretty conclusive.”
"Look, the tape was perhaps not totally conclusive but, to me, it was pretty conclusive and it was vicious and violent and hard to believe — over a traffic violation," Trump said.
Trump repeated his comments to the Wall Street Journal where he decried the brutal incident saying “the video was pretty graphic. Unless there's something that isn't shown, it would certainly be a terrible thing that they did, terrible.”
Trump went on to praise Memphis Police for taking a “strong step” in permanently deactivating the SCORPION police unit, in which the cops involved in the incident were on.
SCORPION was created to target violent offenders in areas beset by high crime and stands for Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods.
However, when asked if he thinks the attack should lead to implementing police reforms, Trump stopped short of endorsing the idea.
“At the same time you have to stop crime,” he said. “So it's sort of like individual people. You have to get the right people that know when you have to be tough and when not to be tough. This was a case of being very, very tough — overly, overly crazy,” Trump said, adding “he was begging for his mother… that’s not a question of reform, that's a question of having people that understand what you have to do and understand life.”
President Joe Biden made several false and misleading claims about America’s future economy during his speech earlier this week while attacking Republicans for their proposals on the economy.
As Biden’s speech kicked off, he claimed that an additional 700,000 construction projects were added across the U.S., however, he largely exaggerated that number.
The White House issued a correction in the transcript of Biden’s speech saying that only 7,000 construction projects have been created.
The second false claim Biden made was saying that the cap on senior’s drug spending is in effect now, as of January 1 there is a limit of $2,000 a year on prescription drug costs for seniors.
In reality, the $2,000 annual cap which was in the Democrat’s Inflation Reduction Act that Biden signed last year, won’t take effect for another two years.
Biden also took credit for millions of people receiving Covid-19 during his time in office, however, former President Trump initiated the rollout of people getting the jab.
In his speech, Biden said that only “3.5 million people” had been fully vaccinated against Covid under Trump, however, 19 million people had already received the first shot before Biden took office.
The 3.5 million Biden cited was the number of people who had received two shots to complete their primary vaccination series.
Following his speech, the president was mocked for saying that he has never felt more optimistic about the future of the country than he does now.
“My word as a Biden: I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s future than I am today,” the president tweeted on Sunday.
However, Twitter users felt the exact opposite.
Rapid Response Director for the RNC Tommy Pigott criticized Biden for misleading the U.S.
“The border is open, real wages are down, energy costs are outrageously high, the Taliban controls Afghanistan, & the cartels are making billions smuggling fentanyl," Pigott tweeted, adding “there is reason to be "optimistic" though - we have a [House GOP] majority who is working to hold Biden accountable.”
Another user called Biden’s word an absolute “lie,” while another said that “My word as a Biden” is like saying my word as a “Clinton”— meaningless.
The death of 29-year-old black man Tyre Nichols allegedly at the hands of five Memphis police officers caught on camera ruthlessly beating and kicking him after a traffic stop was met with universal condemnation from seemingly all sides of the political landscape and - dare I say it - mostly peaceful protests in major U.S. cities nationwide.
Though few seem to want to point it out, the unity this time around stems from two key facts: 1.) All five officers now charged with second-degree murder in the case is also black, and, 2.) The brutality of the excessive force used by police in this situation was impossible to deny, even if it could be argued that Nichols should have been more cooperative (though honestly, whose fight-or-flight wouldn’t kick in after getting tased and pepper-sprayed like that?).
In other words, George Floyd this was not. Unlike Floyd, the drug-addled criminal who once pointed a gun at a pregnant woman’s stomach and was deathly high on fentanyl at the time of his arrest, Nichols, by all accounts, seemed like a genuinely good person and an upstanding citizen. Nobody deserves to die at the hands of the police, but Nichols deserved it least of anyone.
The fact that the officers charged were also black shouldn’t be a factor in a sane society, but it sadly is one because of the powder keg the BLM movement has created. Had those officers been white, Memphis would be in flames right now and the nationwide riots of 2020 would seem like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade compared to what urban America would be enduring.
Still, you’d think everyone commentating on this tragic event would look for other opportunities to race-bait and instead use this tragedy to point out the urgent need for better police hiring, more effective training, and an overall culture that doesn’t treat ordinary citizens like subjects to be obeyed. But no, leftists all over social media continued to try to blame what happened on what they clearly think is the ultimate source of everything bad that ever happens: ‘muh white supremacy.’
“Anyone who says the killing of Tyre Nichols can’t be about racism because the cops were also Black doesn’t understand how white supremacy or anti-Blackness work,” wrote professional race hustler and self-identified “antiracism educator” Tim Wise, proving yet again that these leftist grifters will turn any situation into a pretzel to make white people the bad guys. It’s utter nonsense that anyone with half a brain can see through, but sadly far too many people have lost their brains in this age of mindless wokism.
Challenged by his statement, Wise later in his replies added: “Of course there are individuals. But no individual operates in an institution-free vacuum. We don’t exist on an island, devoid of cultural/social stimuli. Somewhere these men learned to treat people this way, but not, apparently white people, of course.”
The problem with Wise’s analysis, of course, is that there have been plenty of white people killed by police. Significantly more white people are killed by police every year than black people, even though black males commit a majority of violent crimes in America. For example, take a gander at the facts behind the 2016 police murder of Daniel Shaver and the police officer who got off scot-free. Or Tony Timka, whose killing mirrored George Floyd’s in almost every aspect except for the fact that the video wasn’t released for three years, and the officers involved were never charged or even fired.
There were no national protests for either of those men or for the many other white people who have been killed by law enforcement, and any reaction that did happen paled in comparison to the inevitable outcry from the left when even the most justifiable police killings occur (see Rayshard Brooks). Instead, the assumption among the majority of white people in white communities where support for police is high is that those arrested must have done something to cause what happened to them.
Now, for the record, I happen to disagree with that assumption. Police shouldn’t be allowed to run roughshod over anybody, no matter their skin color or socioeconomic status. And while I would certainly counsel anyone about getting arrested for any reason to cooperate with the cops and not cause an already bad situation to get worse, I also support prosecuting officers who engage in excessive force and especially wanton violence.
If leftists were as passionate about exposing and correcting police brutality and corruption as they are about to pretend race-baiting and stoking anti-white sentiments, perhaps some reforms of significance could occur. Until then, we can expect more of the same.
Donald Trump spent the final months of 2022 reeling from electoral setbacks and media disasters. Many of his high-profile endorsements in the midterm elections flopped. His attacks on popular GOP governors in Florida, Virginia, Ohio, and Georgia did little damage to their reputations. His 2024 campaign launch was a snooze. His infamous and inexcusable dinner at Mar-a-Lago with high-profile anti-Semites put him on the political fringe. By the end of last year, Trump appeared to be fading from the national conversation. His chances of winning the Republican nomination seemed to dim.
Now those chances are brightening. Trump continues to dominate in polls of Republicans. He's drawn even with President Biden in head-to-head matchups. He lobbied successfully for Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) to become speaker of the House of Representatives. His loyalists on the House Judiciary, Oversight, and Weaponization of the Federal Government committees will be sure to advance his interests. He's plotting his return to Facebook, Instagram, and possibly Twitter, and his connection with the Republican base remains strong.
Most important of all, Trump's rivals in both the Democratic and Republican parties are repeating the mistakes they made in the run-up to the 2016 election. The Democrats assume that there is no way for Trump to become president, while Republicans believe he will fade from the scene. Their failure to learn from history has made it possible not only for Trump to win the GOP nomination for the third straight time, but to pull another inside straight in the Electoral College and return to the White House. For decades, Trump has said that the political class is corrupt, insular, and incompetent, and that Republican leaders lack guts. Washington is doing its best to prove him right.
Trump's recovery began on January 9, when news broke that classified documents had been found months earlier at a D.C. office President Biden used from 2017 to 2019. Biden, who had called Trump irresponsible and worse when the FBI recovered classified material from Mar-a-Lago last summer, was exposed as a hypocrite. Attorney General Merrick Garland came under intense pressure to appoint a special counsel for Biden, since he already had appointed one to investigate Trump for mishandling classified information and for subverting the last presidential election.
Garland relented on January 12 and tapped U.S. Attorney Robert Hur to lead the inquiry. On January 20, the FBI searched Biden's Wilmington, Del., residence (though not his home in Rehoboth Beach) and unearthed more secret papers. A few days later, former vice president Mike Pence disclosed that classified documents had been found at his house, too.
This chaotic and ridiculous situation is a boon for Trump. Politically, there is no way Garland can indict the sole declared candidate for the presidency in 2024 while exonerating Biden, who's expected to announce his own reelection campaign soon. If Garland were to do so, Trump would portray himself, reasonably, as the victim of a double standard. Biden's boneheaded handling of the documents also reinforces one of Trump's core beliefs: Everyone in politics behaves corruptly, but he alone does so without pretense.
Trump still must worry about separate inquiries, in D.C. and Atlanta, into his conduct after losing the 2020 election. The fight with the National Archives over his papers is a sideshow. If anything, it's Biden who ought to be concerned. The president's changing statements on the subject, and the drip-drip-drip of stories about the material in his possession, raise additional doubts about his honesty and competence.
House Republicans plan to scrutinize the Biden family's influence-peddling business. They are desperate to find a connection between Hunter Biden's laptop from hell and the government intelligence in Joe Biden's garage. Democrats with long memories remember how Hillary Clinton's mishandling of classified information dogged her in 2016. They don't want to go through that mess again.
They may not have a choice. Whether it's the document drama or the looming presidential campaign, history seems to be following a path it traveled once before. Not only has Trump frozen the GOP field, with potential challengers not expected to announce their candidacies for months, if ever. Trump also benefits from the same dynamics that helped him in 2016: His opponents think he will just disappear, a multi-candidate primary gives him an edge, and no Republican wants to attack him directly.
Recently, a few high-profile Republicans have predicted that Trump won't be the GOP nominee. These prognosticators share certain traits: None of them thought Trump would win in 2016, they said Republicans would win big in 2022 (yes, I did too), and they no longer hold elected office precisely because of the changes Trump made to their party. Trump inspires a form of wishful thinking among certain groups of people, a collective illusion that, despite all evidence to the contrary, someday his behavior will change, and he will be content playing golf. Well, it won't, and he's not. The way to thwart Trump is for voters to choose someone else.
That outcome is less likely in a multi-candidate race. In 2016 the non-Trump vote divided three ways among Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and then-governor John Kasich (R., Ohio). The fracture allowed Trump to capitalize on the winner-take-all structure of GOP primaries and win significantcontests, and eventually the nomination, with a plurality of votes. The same thing is happening in polls today. As Nathaniel Rakich observes at FiveThirtyEight, when pollsters offer Republicans several choices, Trump wins by a huge margin. But, in head-to-head matchups with Florida governor Ron DeSantis, Trump tends to lose.
At this writing, DeSantis presents the biggest obstacle for Trump. He sits atop the field in state-level polls of New Hampshire and South Carolina. He's a proven winner and fundraiser who knows when to pick high-profile cultural battles that endear him to conservatives and the MAGA crew. His crusade against wokeness is a way to unify the party behind a tough and competent executive who hasn't alienated suburban independents in his home state. If nominated, he'd represent a rising generation for change against an 81-year-old incumbent who has been in politics for half a century.
Naturally, other Republicans have begun to attack DeSantis. That's to be expected. No one is entitled to a party's nomination, politics ain't beanbag, and running for president ought to be, and is, an arduous task. Potential GOP candidates are probing for weaknesses in DeSantis's stance on abortion, his hardball tactics with big business, his national appeal, and his personal demeanor. Notice, though, whom these Republicans are not criticizing. His initials are DJT.
As happened seven years ago, Republicans are avoiding Trump either because they believe he will pack up and go home or because they are afraid of incurring his wrath and the animosity of his most devoted supporters. They are falling back into formation as a circular firing squad that hurts everybody but the former president.
The presidential campaign is just beginning. No one knows what lies ahead. The Trump rebound may soon pass and won't come again. There's a sleeper candidate or two out there who will make this race interesting.
For now, though, Democrats and Republicans are gambling that they can behave in 2024 just like they did in 2016, but produce a different result.
