The NPR Politics Podcast - President Trump Denies Systemic Racism In Policing. Most Americans Disagree.

Episode Date: June 9, 2020

As Joe Biden's campaign touted his plans for police reform, President Trump denied that there is a systemic problem with American policing; according to polls, a large majority of Americans disagree. And Republicans have controlled Georgia politics for nearly two decades. Tuesday's primary in the state could be the beginning of a shift in power.This episode: campaign correspondents Asma Khalid and Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and WABE reporter Emma Hurt.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. It's 2.09 p.m. on Tuesday, June 9th. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Scott Detrow. I also cover the presidential campaign. And I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. As we tape this podcast today, George Floyd is being laid to rest in Houston. His death sparked days of protests across the country, and those protests have made it clear that race and policing are now even more important issues in the presidential campaign. Former Vice President Joe Biden is calling for police reform, though he does not support calls to defund the police.

That idea is something we've begun to hear more loudly from some protesters on the left. And it probably goes without saying, but President Trump also does not support defunding the police. In fact, Tam, the president seems to deny that there's a problem of systemic racism in police departments at all. He really is not focused on the idea of there being a systemic problem. He has said that George Floyd's death should not have happened, that it was a disturbing video to watch, that it was not OK. But he is going with sort of the the bad apples approach to this. And his campaign is, too, which is to say that he said yesterday in this White House meeting that 99 percent of police officers are good and mean well. It doesn't take on the larger questions that the protesters are

talking about. The protesters aren't just there for George Floyd. They are there because of George Floyd and everyone who's come before him. Is he talking at all about reform? Yes, sort of. There was this meeting at the White House yesterday with law enforcement officials. And they were talking about the need to make some changes, but they weren't particularly specific. And at one point, President Trump said something like, you know, maybe maybe they should be a little bit gentler. But it there's nothing specific. And and I would be reluctant to say, oh, yeah, the White House is moving ahead with some sort of police reform, because what we've seen in the past is they have said that they're working on a plan on things like,

you know, gun violence and and mass shootings. And then in the end, nothing really materializes. The news cycle moves on and you don't hear about it again. Yeah. And on top of that, the president has really very quickly reverted to the culture war way that he approaches so many things in the country. I mean, he's gone back to criticizing kneeling and NFL games in particular. That, of course, is something he made a huge issue of a couple years ago at a time when a handful of NFL players started out kneeling to protest this very issue that has brought thousands of people to the streets, the issue of police violence and racism. The president is back to criticizing kneeling. He's back to,

you know, framing widespread peaceful protests, including enormous protests in D.C. this weekend as either small or having violent elements to them. So it's clear that he has kind of gone back to his corner very quickly. So let's talk a bit about where the conversation is going amongst Democrats. Yesterday on the show, we talked about a proposal from congressional Democrats to make systemic changes to policing. And Joe Biden is also calling for reform, right, Scott? So I mean, walk us through what we know about what he's proposing. Yeah, he's had a lot of specifics. You know, he's broadly supported this proposal from Democrats in Congress. In that big speech that he gave a week ago today that we covered on the podcast, he walked through several specifics that he wants

to see happen now and that he says if not, he would push for as soon as he becomes president. That's, you know, outlawing chokeholds, moves to demilitarize local police departments. A big part of his proposal is a lot more federal oversight. Part of that is simply returning to the more aggressive oversight that the Department of Justice had during the Obama presidency. He also wants to create a National Police Oversight Commission. And his campaign is pointing back to criminal justice proposals that he put forward more than a year ago, a big part of which is to use a lot of money from the federal government as a way to incentivize cities and states to really lower not only their crime rates, but their incarceration rates as well.

So, you know, money goes to states that get rid of mandatory minimums, for instance, and several other steps that would really take a few steps back. So yesterday, President Trump's campaign was very quick to try to tie Biden to this idea of defunding the police and saying that he wouldn't stand up to the left of his party. And then Biden was very quick to say, no, he does not support defunding the police. Does that hurt Biden with the left of his party? You know, I actually just had an interview with Stacey Walker. He is an Iowa political activist and a member of the Linn County Board of Supervisors.

More importantly, for this conversation, he is one of the people on these task forces that the Biden campaign and Bernie Sanders campaign put together to come up with a lot of policy proposals. So he's working on the Justice Task Force, you know, coming up with new policies for Biden's campaign. He says he's generally happy with what Biden has laid out so far. But Walker is someone who does support this defunding movement. He did acknowledge that maybe we have a rebranding problem, you know, is the way that he put it. And I said, well, okay, what pitch would you make to, you know, a swing voter in the suburbs who'd never heard this term before? And he said, boiled down his argument and the argument for people who are pushing for this is the police are doing a ton of things that are not really necessarily police responsibilities, including a lot of social safety network. You need to have

more money for that. So take it from police budget and put it into mental health services, public health services, things like that. You know, I understand why the Trump campaign and Republicans are trying to use this issue of defunding the police as a wedge issue, because ultimately, when you look at public opinion, the stance that the president has been taking around these protests just isn't in sync, it seems, like with the majority of the public at this point in time. And so he has to shift the conversation. You know, I've talked to pollsters about this, and this has just been a remarkable shift. If you look at 2014, if you look at 2016, the views of this idea, this Southern strategy, this, you know, get suburban white women scared of the of the angry horde doesn't work as well when their kids are out there marching, too.

All right. Well, Tam, thanks so much for joining us. I know we're going to let you go for now. Yeah, it's good to be with you. And we're going to take a quick break. When we get back, we'll talk about a big primary race in Georgia today. Support for NPR and the following message come from DuckDuckGo. Do you want the same internet but more privacy? DuckDuckGo can help. They help millions of people like you get privacy online without any trade-offs. With one download,

you can search and browse privately, avoiding trackers. DuckDuckGo. Privacy simplified. This week on It's Been a Minute, I talk out the news with my Aunt Betty. I'm more concerned about the Black men that I love than anything in the world because I just don't want to get that call. Also, parenting in the age of Black Lives Matter and the history of police reform. Listen and subscribe to It's Been a Minute from NPR. And we're back. And we've got Emma Hurt of Atlanta member station WABE here with us now. Hey, Emma. Hey, thanks for having me. So Emma,

we brought you on because there are a bunch of states holding primary elections today. One of those states is Georgia. And we want to narrow in on the primary there because it feels like Democrats have been narrowing the margins in Georgia for the last few election cycles. So explain to us what's been happening there. Yeah, so I think Georgia really caught people's attention in 2018 during our governor's race when Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams barely lost to Governor Brian Kemp by about 55,000 votes, one and a half points. And just two years earlier, Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton here by about five points. And Clinton really barely campaigned in Georgia. And this was all after about 15 years worth of really solid Republican rule in the state.

And now things have changed. And recent Georgia polling is putting Joe Biden neck and neck with President Trump. Yeah, Asma, I would say that the Biden campaign and a lot of Democratic strategists still see, you know, Arizona and probably North Carolina ahead of Georgia when it comes to that second tier of swing states that are going to be important. But Georgia is certainly in the conversation. Money will be spent there. If campaigning happens again, campaigning will happen there. And what we're going to talk about here, these two Senate races in Georgia could be some of the most important Senate races in the country. You know, Scott, you mentioned those Senate races. But before we get into what's on the ballot, it is worth noting that voting is not going

particularly smoothly, it seems in Georgia. I mean, Emma, what's been happening there? Yeah, I'd call it an understatement at this point. I mean, we're seeing, you know, a voting mess in full form right now. Hours worth of lines, confusion and difficulties at polling places with machines. And it's really a perfect storm. I mean, like many places, Georgia has made a big push for absentee ballots more than normal, which has put a whole lot of pressure on county election offices to process them. And there have been some problems. So more people are having to show up than maybe they had anticipated because of those issues.

Then there's pressure on polling places because they've had to consolidate looking for socially distant options. And then on the poll worker side, you know, many of our experienced, more elderly poll workers are not working this time around. So we've got new poll workers. And then in Georgia, we have new voting machines, which have been a big issue here. And this is really their first large scale test. And we are doing it without experienced poll workers to troubleshoot them with more pressure on every polling place. So it's it's a mess. And this really mirrors what you saw in several places last week, including the District of Columbia. You have fewer polling places and then social distancing and all these other factors

and just the fact that a lot of absentee ballot requests didn't go through. So there are going to be some critical questions that need to be addressed before November's presidential election. And that's tougher because you have President Trump really trying to politicize vote by mail pushes and just the basic nuts and bolts of getting requests in and processed in time. There are going to be major, major, major problems. I mean, it does make me wonder how much of what you're describing could foreshadow what we'll see in November. But I guess it's hard to know, just given that we don't really know where the pandemic will be and what the situation will be in the country come November.

Yeah. Yeah. And when you talk about politicization here, I mean, we're seeing it already as this day is playing out. We've got a Republican Secretary of State who's announced he's launching investigations into two democratic counties here in metro atlanta who are having some of the most problems some would argue it's because they're the state's largest so they're just the most people he's saying it's not about our machines it's about these counties handling of it the counties are saying it's the machines so it's it's already starting here so so emma there are a number of congressional primaries happening today but the one i'd like to focus on for our purposes is the Democratic primary to challenge Republican Senator David Perdue.

Yeah, so that is kind of the top of the ticket now that the presidential race, which is still on the ballot, is not really a question mark for many people. We've got seven names on the Democratic primary ballot here. Three of them are really frontrunners. So the name that many people might know is John Ossoff. He got some national attention in 2017 when he ran in a suburban Atlanta congressional district, ended up losing that race, but is back for more and has arguably the most name ID and the most money at this point. Teresa Tomlinson is also running. She's a former mayor of Georgia's second largest city, has been campaigning the longest in this race. And then Sarah Riggs Amico is the former Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor back in 2018. But it's really unclear how much voters are paying attention to this race and how that might shake out actually in the ballot box.

So, Emma, it's worth pointing out that, you know, maybe the most closely watched race in the state actually isn't even occurring today. There is a sort of free for all special election in November for the other Senate seat. Yeah. So right now we have 21 people qualified for that ballot. And it's turned into quite a bit of a mess as well. On the Republican side, we've got a really big intraparty fight between Senator Kelly Loeffler and Representative Doug Collins. This race will likely not be decided until January runoff, just given the volume of candidates. And Asma, we've talked about how the big picture political dynamics seem to be increasingly leaning the Democrats way, at least for now, nationally. That has led Democrats to

feel pretty confident about picking up seats in places like Arizona, Colorado, Maine, maybe North Carolina. And the more confident Democrats feel about some of these other states, the more there's a real argument that these two Senate seats up in Georgia could be the seats that decide whether or not Republicans maintain control of the Senate or whether it flips to a narrow Democratic majority. All right, well, we are going to leave it there. Emma, thanks so much for joining the show. Thanks for having me, guys.

And we'll be back tomorrow in your feed as usual. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the campaign. And I'm Scott Detrow. I also cover the campaign. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.