Biden says that ‘Defund the police’ helped GOP win over Democrats

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If you were thinking that Joe Biden would align with progressives on issues of police reform, you’d be wrong. In leaked audio of a recent conversation that the president-elect had with civil rights leaders, he said that combating police misconduct in departments around the country would need a measured response.

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The meeting was attended by Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris, Rev. Al Sharpton, NAACP CEO Derrick Johnson, soon to be former Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond, who is heading to Washington as a Biden advisor, Sherilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Melanie L. Campbell, president/CEO, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, and Vanita Gupta, the president and Chief Executive Officer of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights civil rights coalition.

In audio obtained by TheIntercept.com, Biden said that with control of the Senate on the line, leaders needed to be careful.

While someone on the recording assured participants that the call wasn’t being recorded, it obviously was.

“I also don’t think we should get too far ahead ourselves on dealing with police reform in that, because they’ve already labeled us as being ‘Defund the police’ anything we put forward in terms of the organizational structure to change policing — which I promise you, will occur. Promise you,” Biden said on the recording.

While he said he’s committed to making change, Biden said that “defunding” the police was a non-starter.

“That’s how they beat the living hell out of us across the country, saying that we’re talking about defunding the police. We’re not. We’re talking about holding them accountable. We’re talking about giving them money to do the right things. We’re talking about putting more psychologists and psychiatrists on the telephones when the 911 calls through. We’re talking about spending money to enable them to do their jobs better, not with more force, with less force and more understanding.”

Biden was asked about civil rights, Cabinet picks, policing, and how much power he could wield using executive orders. He was at varying times self-congratulatory, funny, slightly combative and claimed that he’d gotten more done than anyone else in politics, including, by implication, his predecessor as president, Barack Obama.

The president-elect said that while he can wield some power using executive orders, its not limitless.

“Vanita [Gupta], you probably used to get angry with me during the debates, when you’d have some of the people you were supporting saying, ‘On Day 1, I’m gonna have an executive order to do this!’ Not within the constitutional authority. I am not going to violate the Constitution. Executive authority that my progressive friends talk about is way beyond the bounds. And as one of you said, maybe it was you, Reverend Al [Sharpton], whether it’s far left or far right, there is a Constitution. It’s our only hope. Our only hope and the way to deal with it is, where I have executive authority, I will use it to undo every single damn thing this guy [Trump] has done by executive authority.”

While Biden promised to address police reform, another report by The Intercept suggested that it will be a challenge for the administration to make any meaningful change as it’s believed that Democratic losses in the House were accelerated by pushback to the call to defund the police.

In a recording of a call among House Democrats also obtained by the outlet, New Jersey Rep. Bill Pascrell revealed he lost the endorsement of the state’s most powerful police union after voting for the George Floyd Justice In Policing Act, which was passed by the House in June. The bill aims to limit qualified immunity which allows police to shield themselves from liability in civil cases.

In this year’s election, Republicans were able to flip more than a dozen seats which political strategists believe was due to the heat around policing issues.

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“This childish ‘defund’ whining has killed robust reform,” said a Democratic congressional aide per The Intercept. “All the people that marched in July and that were so moved by George Floyd, they’ve now shifted their ire toward ‘defund.’ And it’s like, this is why Black people don’t trust people in the movement in the first place.”

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