The Law-Enforcement Abuses That Don’t Bother Trump

President Donald Trump has seen abusive law enforcement before—stared it in the face, called it by its name, denounced it.

He did not, to be sure, see the killing of George Floyd—the latest African American man to be killed by a police officer—as a reason to condemn abusive policing, although video of Floyd’s death prompted millions of Americans to recoil in horror and sparked outrage, protest, and violence nationwide. The president has been mostly quiet on that subject, and when he has spoken, he has done so in the passive voice, decrying it as a “grave tragedy” and a “terrible thing.” Then he has tended to change the subject quickly to the unrest in response to Floyd’s death.

Nor did he find the indefensible police reaction to many of the protests—a reaction that has been needlessly violent and confrontational, and that has often targeted bystanders and reporters—a reason to condemn abusive