After a mob’s attack on the Capitol in 2021, which included assaults on police officers, Donald Trump has referred to the rioters as “patriots” and “hostages,” and has criticized an officer who shot and killed a woman trying to breach a doorway near the House chamber. Yet Trump, who is the first former president to face criminal indictment, has sought to portray himself as a champion of law enforcement, surrounding himself at events with a tableau of police officers and law-enforcement officials as he campaigns to return to the White House, reports the New York Times. Trump has been endorsed by three police unions. He stood next to the Nassau County, N.Y., police commissioner at a microphone outside a funeral home where he paid a condolence call at the wake for a slain New York police officer, Jonathan Diller. Days later, Trump promised that he would pass a law for a mandatory death penalty for people who kill police officers. “You’ll see the whole situation come to a halt,” he said of police deaths.
Trump often poses for photos with local police officers who are helping guard his motorcades at various stops, including last week when he took pictures with officers at a campaign stop in Upper Manhattan on the second day of his criminal trial. His aides post photos and videos of the encounters on social media, a montage intended to underscore a law-and-order image of the presumptive Republican nominee. John Miller, a former senior official in two police departments and at the FBI, said the cultural bond between Trump and police officers stems from “police across the country” who “have felt increasingly abandoned and isolated, unsupported by their city councils, by their mayors, by their governors.” He added, when “someone comes out unequivocally in support of law enforcement and understanding the challenges they face, it’s hard to resist because it’s increasingly rare today.” Miller said President Biden also has a long history of supporting police work but added that statements that Biden made in the 2020 campaign were seen as less than unequivocally supportive of law enforcement. For Trump, a complicating factor is his support for people who rioted on Jan. 6 — some of whom assaulted police trying to restore order.