Trump says police using force sometimes ‘choke’ like a golfer missing ‘a 3-foot putt’
President Donald Trump compared police officers who use excessive force to golfers who “choke” during tournaments.
“They choke,” Trump said in an interview Monday with Fox News host Laura Ingraham. “Just like in a golf tournament, they miss a three-foot putt.”
He continued: “You have some bad people, and they choke. You could be a police officer for 15 years and all of a sudden you’re confronted. You’ve got a quarter of a second to make a decision. If you don’t make the decision, and you’re wrong, you’re dead. People choke under those circumstances, and they make a bad decision.”
Trump said police are “under siege” and referenced Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man who was shot several times in the back by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Aug. 23. Blake remains in a Milwaukee hospital and is paralyzed from the waist down, his father has said.
An officer shot Blake as he tried to get into the driver’s seat of his car. Police were trying to arrest him and had unsuccessfully attempted to use a Taser to stop him, the Wisconsin Department of Justice said.
Blake later “admitted that he had a knife in his possession,” Wisconsin officials said. The officers involved in the shooting have been placed on administrative leave.
“Couldn’t you have done something different? Couldn’t you have wrestled him?” Trump said during the interview Monday. “In the meantime, he might’ve been going for a weapon and you know, there’s a whole big thing there.”
‘Dark shadows’
Trump also said that people in “dark shadows” are controlling Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
He made the comment as he and Ingraham discussed the protests and civil unrest that followed the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, in Minneapolis police custody on May 25.
“People that you’ve never heard of, people that are in the dark shadows” are controlling Biden, Trump said.
Ingraham interjected, saying that it “sounds like a conspiracy theory.”
“There are people that are on the streets, there are people that are controlling the streets,” Trump responded.
Without providing further details, Trump said someone who attended the Republican National Convention last week traveled on a plane with “thugs”
“We had somebody get on a plane from a certain city this weekend. And in the plane, it was almost completely loaded with thugs, wearing these dark uniforms, black uniforms, with gear and this and that,” he said.
Trump has blamed Biden and the Democrats for the civil unrest in recent months, saying during his acceptance speech at the RNC that “no one will be safe in Biden’s America.”
Trump said the election “will decide whether we will defend the American way of life or allow a radical movement to completely dismantle and destroy it.”
On Monday, Biden said Trump “failed to protect America,” NPR reported. “So now he’s trying to scare America,” Biden said.
“[Trump] can’t stop the violence because for years he has fomented it,” Biden continued. “He may believe mouthing the words ‘law and order’ makes him strong, but his failure to call on his own supporters to stop acting as an armed militia in this country shows how weak he is.”
Trump is traveling to Kenosha on Tuesday, according to NPR. In response to Biden’s comments, Trump tweeted Biden was “blaming the Police far more than he’s blaming the Rioters, Anarchists, Agitators, and Looters.
