Michigan Cops Endorse Trump, Who Salutes Followers Accused Of Assaulting Police | EUROtoday

A Michigan police union has turn out to be the second to again Donald Trump, who glorifies and guarantees to pardon people charged with, and in lots of instances convicted of, violently assaulting law enforcement officials.

“We want you to accept our endorsement for president of the United States,” Jim Tignanelli, president of the 12,000-member Police Officers Association of Michigan, advised the coup-attempting former president at a marketing campaign look in Grand Rapids Tuesday.

David Malhalab, a retired Detroit police sergeant of 31 years, mentioned he was appalled by the announcement. “It’s inexplicable,” he mentioned. “They should condemn and reject Trump.”

“At the start of every rally, Trump honors insurrectionists who assaulted my colleagues with flag poles and bashed their heads against walls,” mentioned Harry Dunn, a former Capitol Police officer who was known as the N-word by Trump followers on Jan. 6, 2021.

Tignanelli didn’t reply to HuffPost queries.

The union’s web page options its Trump endorsement, stating: “He unequivocally condemned violence and unrest, standing firmly with law enforcement in times of crisis.”

That assertion, although, is fake. On Jan. 6, Trump sat for hours in a small eating room of the Oval Office, watching a mob of his followers assault law enforcement officials and overrun the Capitol of their try to coerce Congress into overturning Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.

Only within the late afternoon, after police had turned the tide in opposition to his supporters, Trump lastly launched a video telling them to depart the Capitol, which they rapidly did.

And though Trump the next day condemned the violence, he has over the previous yr come to embrace what his supporters did that day. At current rallies, he has stood and saluted as a recording of the nationwide anthem sung by Jan. 6 detainees, interspersed with Trump’s studying of the Pledge of Allegiance, is performed over the loudspeakers.

Of the 20 held within the District of Columbia jail on March 13, 2020, the day of the recording, 17 had been charged — and in some instances already convicted — of assaulting police. The different three had been charged with seditious conspiracy — making an attempt to overthrow the constitutional order in order to maintain Trump in energy.

Trump’s conservative critics battle to reconcile police unions’ help together with his unwillingness to sentence the violence accomplished in his identify.

“I don’t understand it, unless they feel the same disregard for their fellow officers who were injured and killed on Jan. 6 at the hands of insurrectionists called to Washington by Trump that Trump and his supporters do,” mentioned Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee.

He pointed to the demise of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick by stroke hours after Trump supporters assaulted him. “I wonder if they would have offered condolences to Mrs. Sicknick, because Trump didn’t. I wonder if they would have gone to Officer Sicknick’s wake, let alone funeral, because Trump did neither. I wonder if they are insulted and outraged that Trump wants to pardon insurrectionists convicted of crimes committed on Jan. 6, because apparently they are not.”

For many years, police unions have tended to help Republican candidates over Democrats, and a few Republicans mentioned the truth that some police unions are supporting Trump now may very well be so simple as that.

“They see Jan. 6 as a single point in time — that it was regrettable, but not something they base these decisions on,” mentioned David Kochel, a veteran Republican political advisor. “And because they think Biden and the left are worse.”

Rick Wilson, a longtime GOP advisor turned fierce Trump critic, mentioned nobody must be stunned that law enforcement officials and their unions again Trump, regardless of the whole lot.

“When you look at the demographics of police and police union leadership, they are exactly dead center in the Trump demo. Let’s be honest here. It’s a job you can get without a college degree and a lot of the people drawn to it are drawn to the kind of behavior Trump exhibits: strong man, tough guy, blustery,” Wilson mentioned. “I know a lot of law-enforcement officers who are very uncomfortable with Trump, but they are, I believe, an exception, rather than the rule.”

The Michigan union’s endorsement comes two months after the Florida-based International Union of Police Associations endorsed Trump.

Dunn, who’s now working for Congress in Maryland, mentioned police departments are a mirrored image of America, and that sadly, many Americans help Trump, regardless of his actions on Jan. 6.

“But we cannot be fooled and let Trump brand himself as someone who cares about law and order,” Dunn mentioned. “Because Donald Trump doesn’t care about law and order or about police officers. He only cares about himself.”

The police endorsements additionally come regardless of Trump’s standing as a prison defendant in 4 separate prosecutions — two of them based mostly on his actions main as much as and on Jan. 6.

A federal indictment may go to trial as early as late summer time, relying on the timing of a Supreme Court ruling on his declare that he’s immune from prosecution. A Georgia state prosecution based mostly on his try to overturn his election loss in that state may additionally begin later this yr.

A New York state prosecution on prices that he falsified enterprise information to cover hush cash funds within the days earlier than the 2016 election is scheduled to start jury choice on April 15, whereas a second federal prosecution based mostly on his refusal to show over secret paperwork he took with him from the White House to his South Florida nation membership has not but been set for trial.

In a separate civil case, a New York jury in 2023 discovered that Trump had sexually penetrated Carroll in opposition to her will in an incident within the Nineties, discovering him accountable for sexual abuse. The federal decide within the case later clarified that Trump’s actions had been rape within the “common modern parlance.”