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‘Defund the FBI’? Is Marjorie Taylor Greene serious?

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on

Yes, I had to polish my eyeglasses and put them back on for a second look before I could believe what the always provocative and occasionally rational Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had just tweeted.

In a takeoff on the Black Lives Matter slogan, she tweeted “Defund the FBI.”

Cute.

Barely a step ahead of other like-minded lawmakers, the Georgia Republican went on to sell hats and other souvenir merchandise online with the slogan, all in response to the FBI’s execution of a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, the Florida home of her hero, former President Donald Trump.

Although more than a dozen other Republicans publicly shared Greene’s sentiments, others, like Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw, were not amused.

Although he was “impressed Democrats finally got us to say, ‘Defund the FBI,’ ” he said sarcastically, the slogan “makes you look unserious, when you start talking like that.”

 

On that, I agree. I have expressed similar criticism of the original “Defund the police” slogan as it emerged amid global protests by the Black Lives Matter movement following George Floyd’s murder by police in 2020.

Although apologists defended the slogan as a call for constructively rethinking policies that pile too many social service burdens on police, conservatives easily turned it into a call for softness on crime.

Now, in another ironic twist, a disturbing number of Republicans are using it to call for softness on Trump.

After the FBI search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, many Trump supporters have turned a slogan they hate into one that they love, even at the cost of the GOP calls to “Support the police” and “Back the Blue” going back at least to Richard M. Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign.

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(c) 2022 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

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