Consider civil rights attorney, and CNN legal analyst Areva Martin thoroughly unimpressed with Trump's Rose Garden speech and executive order on policing in America. Brianna Keilar asked her if there was anything she liked about what she saw, and if it will have any impact whatsoever. Martin did not hold back.
MARTIN: I don't like any of it, Brianna. I felt like it was a big smack in the face for the protesters that have been on the streets the last 19, 20 days calling for big and bold changes to ways that police departments in this country operate. What the president didn't do at all was address the systemic racism issues that are at the core of these issues. He comes out, surrounded by law enforcement personnel, talks about his law and order agenda, without at all even applying lip service to the systemic problems that have, you know, a big, bright light is shining on. This is another band-aid on a hemorrhage. This is another carrot that Trump is dangling in front of the American public and, quite frankly, protesters are tired of it. Civil rights activists, we're all tired of this president and his approach to these issues, which is basically a non-approach. I didn't find anything encouraging about what he did today. If anything, he made mockery, I think, of the whole process that's in place, where people are demanding reimagining our public safety and the way police police particularly African-American communities. He didn't speak to those issues at all.
None of this is surprising, but the rage is palpable and more deserved each day. Keilar asked Martin about the absurd motions Trump went through by issuing an executive order in which chokeholds were banned, unless the officer's life was at risk. That's like issuing an executive order mandating that everything needs to stay exactly as it is. In the immortal words of Basil Fawlty, "What is the bloody point?" Clearly he thinks the Black community and those who support it are too stupid to recognize bullsh*t when they see it.
Martin blew that nonsense to bits.
MARTIN: It's not a standard that can even be followed by anyone. We see in these cases all the time, Brianna, law enforcement, police agents, officers defend their actions by saying they felt their life was in danger. All they have to do is repeat that refrain we hear repeated over and over again. And, according to these guidelines, they would be completely justified in their use of chokeholds. He's not banning chokeholds. He's not changing the way police officers police African-American communities and other communities of color. He's just paying lip service to these issues. He's patting his law enforcement buddies on the back, he's telling them what a great job they're doing and not at all addressing the underlying issues. The New York Times wrote a great article over the weekend about what happened after 2014, and all the protests we saw following the police murdering of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and they said tens of millions of dollars was invested in all of these de-escalation, implicit bias, so many reforms we're hearing about and nothing moved the needle on the 1,000 people that are killed every year by police officers and the article basically said what the protesters are saying, that unless we make big and bold changes to the way we police, we're going to be right back here, not -- I can't even say a month from now, because we were right back here over the weekend with Mr. Brooks in Atlanta. Trump hasn't done anything other than insult the protesters.
She's absolutely right. And did anyone expect anything different? I mean, I didn't see his framing school "choice" as the biggest civil rights issue of our time coming, but the rest of it? Classic Trump.
