Less than a year ago, during a campaign rally in Middletown, PA, former President Donald Trump stood before a crowd of characteristically rabid MAGA fanatics and encouraged the hoard to "look at all the police back there."
"Are they the greatest?" he declared, clapping along as the crowd began to chant "back the blue!"
But would it shock you to learn that the same president who once promised law enforcement officers he would "always have your back 100 percent" is, in fact, full of shit?
According to "two sources familiar with the comments and who described them independently," The Daily Beast reported this week that Trump has allegedly been privately referring to the Capitol Police officers who were attacked by his own mob of violent insurrectionists as "pussies" who were "broke" by the events of January 6. The outlet also reported Trump has referred to the officers — particularly those who have gone on to publicly discuss their experience being harassed, threatened, and beaten during his attempted coup — as simply not being tough enough for his liking.
The comments reportedly came in the weeks ahead of this past Tuesdays introductory hearing of the House Select Committee empaneled to investigate the events, and antecedents of, the January 6 insurrection. During the hearing, CPD officer Harry Dunn detailed the coarse racism he experienced during the riot, describing "one woman in a pink MAGA shirt [who] yelled ‘You hear that guys? This n*gger voted for Joe Biden.'" Officer Michael Fanone, who has long spoken publicly about the violence he was subjected to during the insurrection, told the committee that "I heard chanting from some in the crowd, 'Get his gun and kill him with his own gun.'"
"I was aware enough to recognize I was at risk of being stripped of and killed with my own firearm," he continued. "I was electrocuted again, and again, and again, with a taser."
Perhaps most germane to Trump's alleged dismissal of the Capitol Police was officer Daniel Hodges' testimony, in which he described the dissonance he felt being attacked by a crowd festooned in "thin blue line" paraphernalia — a point underscored by video played during the hearing wherein the crowd of insurrectionists can clearly be heard shouting ""fuck the blue!"
Trump, meanwhile, reportedly spent the most of January 6 watching TV.
