When Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was asked about the Tulsa police officer who shot and killed Terence Crutcher, he suggested that the officer, Betty Shelby, had “choked.”
“I’m a tremendous believer in the police and law enforcement, because we need that for ourselves. We do,” Trump said Wednesday at the New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
He then added, “They’re great people. Now [with] great people you always have problems. You have somebody in there who either makes a mistake, [someone] that’s bad, or that chokes.”
“This young officer, I don’t know what she was thinking,” he said of Officer Shelby. “I’m very, very troubled by that [shooting], and we have to be very careful. These things are terrible.”
“Did she get scared? Was she choking? What happened?” he asked.
While Trump suggested that Shelby should not have even been on the force, he went on to defend Crutcher.
“I watched the shooting in particular in Tulsa. And that man was hands-up. That man went to the car, hands up. Put his hand on the car,” he said. “I mean, to me it looked like he did everything you’re supposed to do. And he looked like a really good man.”