Trump's executive order on policing looks like a setup

If the president wants to thwart real reform, this will be his excuse

President Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

The executive order on policing President Trump signed Tuesday afternoon is not entirely symbolic. Nor, however, is it anything remotely close to being a "pretty comprehensive" reform, as Trump claimed.

Perhaps that phrase is simply typical Trumpian hyperbole. But the choice to label the order "comprehensive" strikes me as suspect, particularly when more thorough reform packages are being developed in Congress. "Certainly we can add on to what we do [in the executive order] by the work that's being done in the House and in the Senate," Trump said Monday — but by falsely declaring his own order "comprehensive," he has already suggested no addition is needed. Thus the Trump order could serve as a foundation for further reform, but it could also serve as a setup: a ready-made excuse for Trump to veto any significant congressional changes to American policing.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.