Trump says even good cops 'choke' and make mistakes while making decisions: 'They've only quarter of a second'
President Donald Trump discouraged vigilantes from confronting rioters and defended law enforcement officers, noting how they sometimes "choked" after having made split-second decisions. Trump was asked a question about 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, the rifle-toting vigilante charged with fatally shooting two men during protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin last week. “I’d like to see law enforcement take care of everything,” the president said in response, the New York Post reported.
“We have to give our cops back — our police back their dignity, the respect,” he said at a White House press briefing on Monday, August 31. The POTUS acknowledged that “everybody agrees you have to be very tough on bad cops,” but “sometimes you have a cop or a police person who is a good… but they choke.”
“They literally have a quarter of a second to make some of these decisions, and they make a wrong decision. It’s very devastating,” he explained. “If they make the wrong decision in the other direction, they are probably dead. So they choke sometimes. And that goes on the evening news for weeks. And the thousands and tens of thousands of great things they do, nobody covers that.”
At the briefing, the president expressed sympathy for law enforcement ahead of his scheduled tour of Kenosha on September 1. Meanwhile, he also expressed sympathy for Rittenhouse, whose supporters claim he fired his weapon in self-defense.
“That was an interesting situation. You saw the same tape as I saw, and he was trying to get away from them, I guess. It looks like. And he fell, and then they very violently attack him,” Trump said. “And it was something that we’re looking at right now and it’s under investigation but I guess he was in very big trouble. He would have been, he probably would have been killed.”
Last week, large protests were followed by unrest and violence across cities. Rittenhouse, an Antioch, Illinois resident, opened fire with an AR-15-style rifle, shooting three, of whom two died. It has been claimed that Rittenhouse was protecting local businesses from violent rioters. After a heated confrontation with a group of protesters, the teenager allegedly opened fire to defend himself.
As per CBS News, Rittenhouse is charged as an adult with two counts of first-degree homicide and one count of attempted homicide. It further reported that Rittenhouse's attorney has decried the charges stating: "This young boy was not only attacked on the streets of Kenosha, he's been attacked in the media and social media all over the damn world. It is wrong. He is a 17-year-old boy. He was not there to create trouble, but he found himself with his life threatened and he had the right to protect himself with self-defense and now he finds himself accused of murder."
The POTUS' controversial stand sparked an online debate on whether Rittenhouse should be pardoned. Some infuriated social media users feared that Trump might pardon the teenage shooter if he is re-elected and will invite him to the White House. Others, however, called Rittenhouse a "patriotic hero" and urged the president to pardon him.