VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) – Donald Trump says he believes relations between police and the nation’s African-American community are “far worse” than people think, predicting that protests against police violence that followed last week’s slaying of five police officers in Dallas “might be just the beginning for this summer.”
In an interview Monday with The Associated Press, the presumptive GOP nominee struck a balance between the law-and-order rhetoric he has espoused during his campaign and an appreciation for the concerns held by African-Americans nationwide about the conduct of police.
Trump suggested that a lack of training for officers might be at least partially to blame for the two police shootings that led to last Thursday’s protest in Dallas, where a lone gunman killed five in an act of vengeance against white officers. At the same time, Trump denounced the name of the Black Lives Matter movement as “a very divisive term.”
The interview followed a speech on veterans issues in which Trump declared, “I am the law and order candidate,” an echo of Richard Nixon’s response to protest violence that broke out in 1968 following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Like Trump, Nixon was a Republican running for president at the time.
“It’s time for our hostility against our police, and against all members of law enforcement, to end, and end immediately, right now,” Trump said during his speech, comparing anti-police sentiment to the harassment faced by returning veterans in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.