This is the President of the National Association of Police Organizations, Michael McHale, who endorsed Trump last night.
To all of the members out there who behave morally and ethically, and don’t support endorsing felons…I’m sorry you have this sad slab of shit as President.
Night three of the GOP convention felt very separated from the turmoil stemming from the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
Igor Bobic and Nick Robins-Early at HuffPost:
Republicans leaned into President Donald Trump’s “law and order” message on the third night of their party convention Wednesday. But with no substantive mentions of the unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the night felt very separated from the moment.
Before the Republican National Convention kicked off for the night, the country was in severe turmoil stemming from the Kenosha police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man. An apparent white vigilante was arrested for murder hours before the convention began for allegedly shooting three protesters, two of whom died. The NBA and WNBA shut down for the evening as players demanded action to end police violence; several MLB and Major League Soccer games were canceled for the same reason.
During the only live address of the evening, Vice President Mike Pence briefly addressed protests that have taken place around the country. But he did not acknowledge the incident that sparked the most recent wave: a police officer shooting Blake in the back seven times.
“The violence must stop — whether in Minneapolis, Portland or Kenosha,” Pence said. “Too many heroes have died defending our freedoms to see Americans strike each other down.”
The rest of the night’s speeches, which were previously recorded, offered only general warnings about supposed mob violence and did not address the burgeoning crisis head-on.
“From Seattle and Portland to Washington and New York, Democrat-run cities across this country are being overrun by violent mobs. The violence is rampant. There’s looting, chaos, destruction and murder,” South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said, echoing one of Trump’s central arguments.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee started off her convention speech by saying America is a “land of heroes.” She then accused Democrats of trying to “cancel” heroes like police officers.
“Leftists try to turn them into villains. They try to ‘cancel’ them. But I’m here to tell you that these heroes can’t be canceled,” Blackburn said, tying policing to one of the right’s biggest complaints about Democrats and the media ― so-called “cancel culture.”
The “law and order”-themed night also featured Michael McHale, the president of the National Association of Police Organizations lobbying group, who praised law enforcement while dismissing problems in U.S. policing by claiming “nobody hates bad cops more than good cops.”
An overwhelming majority of the country supports changes to policing, but McHale put the blame on Democratic officials.
“Chaos results when elected officials in cities like Portland, Minneapolis, Chicago and New York make the conscious and very public decision not to support law enforcement,” he said, claiming he was “shocked and disgusted by how far left Joe Biden has swung and how anti-law enforcement he has become.”
McHale has previously praised Trump for directing Attorney General William Barr to “aggressively prosecute” people attacking police, and claimed his organization needed the president’s support to stop “unfair and inaccurate opprobrium” against officers.
In 2018, McHale also called for a boycott of all Nike products on behalf of the organization’s members after the company featured Colin Kaepernick in an ad campaign. At the time, he called Kaepernick ― an NFL quarterback who kneeled during the national anthem before games to protest police brutality and systemic racism — “a shallow dilettante seeking to gain notoriety by disrespecting the flag for which so many Americans have fought and died.”
During the convention, pundits on Fox News framed protests and violence as the result of Democratic officials being unwilling to enforce the “law and order” that only Trump could bring. Tucker Carlson appeared to dismiss the actions of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old aspiring police officer who is charged with first-degree murder for his alleged involvement in the killing of two people at protests in Kenosha.
“How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?” Carlson asked.
Police were present during the protests where Rittenhouse allegedly shot multiple people, however. Footage from earlier in the night shows officers giving him water and thanking him for his presence. Police officers ignored Rittenhouse immediately after the shooting, even as protesters yelled that he was the gunman, a witness told Vice News.
Rittenhouse appeared in the front row of a Trump rally in January, BuzzFeed News reported.
Last night at the RNC, several speakers (including Kristi Noem, Mike Pence, and Michael McHale) spouted out their racist police apologism and anti-Black Lives Matter bromides in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
Michael McHale looks like every TV police sergeant ever all rolled into one.
He is a good choice to call out the the Democrat politicians and media who have enabled the riots in Kenosha. I blame the media for empowering the riots as much as the rioters themselves.
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