As the outrage over police brutality and the police killing of George Floyd persists, GOP leaders, including President Trump and Stephen Miller, respond with lukewarm efforts of reform and appeasement.
In the first two weeks following the police killing of George Floyd, Republican leaders responded by encouraging the shooting of protestors; calling for the military to deploy to American cities to crack down on “nihilist criminals;” and describing violence at demonstrations initiated by police as “provocation that was created deliberately for national television.”
But as the country enters its third week of indignation, Republican lawmakers and President Trump have responded with delayed vows of reform — or at least lip service that shows they’ve realized that the mass unrest is a new political reality.
As House Democrats answer to pressure from the left to defund the police with a moderate bill pushing policing reform, Senate Republicans are planning their own delayed response. On Tuesday, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that he had deputized South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, the only black Republican in the chamber, to “lead a group that is working on a proposal to allow us to respond to the obvious racial discrimination that we’ve seen on our television screens over the last two weeks.
