PHILADELPHIA — Vice President Mike Pence told a gathering of Philadelphia police officers that Joe Biden views them as the “enemy,” warning the presumptive Democratic nominee would gut funding for local law enforcement and jeopardize public safety.
Pence delivered the aggressive speech to an indoor gathering of approximately 300 police officers and family members at a Fraternal Order of Police lodge in Philadelphia at the tail end of a bus tour campaign swing through Pennsylvania on Thursday. President Trump trails Biden in this critical swing state in public opinion polls, and Pence presented the choice before voters in November as one between order and chaos.
“Minneapolis, as reported, has begun dismantling their police department. New York City’s mayor, [Bill] de Blasio, has actually cut the NYPD’s budget by about $1 billion,” Pence said. “And, I heard that just yesterday, Joe Biden said that well-armed police, in his words, ‘become the enemy.’ And he said that he would ‘absolutely, cut funding for law enforcement.’”
Biden, who previously announced his opposition to the blanket defunding of police departments advocated by some liberals, has never described the police as being “the enemy.”
But Republicans are attacking the former vice president for saying in recent comments that the police “have become” the enemy in the eyes of some Americans because of certain law enforcement tactics and use of military-style weapons.
“Surplus military equipment for law enforcement? They don’t need that,” Biden said. “They have become the enemy. They’re supposed to be protecting these people.”
Before taking the stage, Pence met with a group of healthcare system administrators, nurses, and physicians to discuss the challenges posed by the coronavirus, which has seen a summer resurgence, especially in states across the South and Southwest. The meeting was not made available for press coverage.
The vice president also talked privately with the surviving family members of James “Jimmy” O’Connor, a Philadelphia police officer who was killed in the line of duty earlier this year, as well as officers who were shot and wounded during an hourslong standoff in August of last year.
In public remarks that followed, Pence vowed that he and Trump would stand with the police in the wake of criticism emanating from the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in late May after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
“I want you to hear this directly from me: Under this president and this administration, we’re not going to defund the police,” he added, referring to calls from some on the Left to slash taxpayer funding for law enforcement. “We will join with you to stand against the rioters and the looters and the anarchists who would pull down our statues and try and destroy our communities.”
Pence began Thursday in Lancaster County in central Pennsylvania, a region that could hold the key to Trump’s prospects in the state. After raising $1 million for the Trump campaign at an outdoor fundraiser adjacent to the private home of a wealthy Republican donor, the vice president traveled to Philadelphia in campaign bus emblazoned with pictures of himself and Trump and the slogan “Keep America Great,” stopping for a “round table” with technology company executives and a meeting with Philadelphia police officers and their families.
The trip turned out to be a bracketing exercise of sorts, coming the same day that Biden traveled to a community near Scranton, Pennsylvania, to unveil his “Build Back Better” plan to revitalize an American economy devastated by the coronavirus.
“Donald Trump loves to talk and talk and talk. But after three and a half years of big promises, what do the American people have to show for all the talk?” the presumptive Democratic nominee said, according to pool reports.
Speaking to Ragant Corporation executives, Pence countered that Biden would raise taxes, ratchet up job-killing regulations, and hamper the economic recovery.
“Not far from here, Joe Biden is at another company to talk about his plans for the economy going forward, and I think the choice has never been clearer for the American people,” he said. “It’s remarkable to think that under the Obama-Biden administration, this lost economy lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs. In fact, Pennsylvania lost 51,000 manufacturing jobs. In the first three years, 500,000 manufacturing jobs were added because of the policies of this president.”
