Trump’s MAGA base finds its own rallying cry: Defend the police

First, it was socialism. Then it was antifa. Now, with the latest protests sweeping the nation, President Donald Trump’s base has found its newest foil: the snowballing movement to drastically reduce the size and budgets of police departments to constrain discriminatory law enforcement practices.

The rallying cry of the far left is now becoming the rallying cry of the right, energizing the MAGA movement to defend the police.

“It seems to me that the goal there is to totally abolish the police department and replace it with something else,” said Ryan Fournier, founder of Students for Trump. “I don't know what 'something else' is. I don't think we've gone that far down that rabbit hole. But I think it's counterproductive.”

The backlash from the right comes even as many conservatives begin to accept the premise that African Americans are disproportionately targeted by police. A recent Washington Post-Schar School poll found that 53 percent of Republicans backed the protests, and 47 percent believed police killings of black men indicate broader problems, compared with 19 percent in 2014.

But Trump’s die-hard conservative base is unnerved by what they view as an extreme solution from extreme leftists. To them, addressing the problem by slashing resources to law enforcement is an attack on the central tenet of the Republican Party — law and order — and one that Trump himself is setting up as a wedge issue to bolster his case for reelection in the coming months.