Democrat Makes Misleading ‘Defund the Police’ Claim
A senior aide to President Joe Biden misleadingly claimed that congressional Republicans “defunded the police” when they voted against the American Rescue Plan Act. House and Senate Republicans didn’t support the legislation, but it wasn’t a vote to cut or eliminate federal funding for law enforcement, as the claim may have led viewers to believe.
Cedric Richmond, a senior adviser to the president and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, made the claim during a June 27 interview on “Fox News Sunday.” He was asked to respond to Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham’s statement that Biden’s proposed plan to address rising crime across the country would not work because a “declared war on the police” was “backfiring on those who have done it.”
“Senator Graham doesn’t have a clue. And let’s talk about who defunded the police,” Richmond said, referring to the of terminating or shifting funds away from police budgets that some Democrats and activists embraced in 2020 after a Black man,
