May 31, 2020

Trump’s National Security Adviser: “I Don’t Think There’s Systemic Racism” in US Police

Wishing problems are the fault of a few bad apples doesn’t make it true.

State of the Union

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

George Floyd is only the latest in a long line of unarmed African-Americans killed by police in the past few years. Nearly 50 percent of the unarmed people killed by officers from the country’s 100 biggest police departments between 2013 and 2019 were black. Yet on Sunday, after “State of the Union” host Jake Tapper asked Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, whether he thought systemic racism was a problem in US law enforcement agencies, he insisted police brutality was simply a problem of a few “bad apples.” 

“No, I don’t think there’s systemic racism,” O’Brien told Tapper. “I think ninety-nine point nine percent of our law enforcement officers are great Americans. Many of them are African American, Hispanic, Asian, they’re working the toughest neighborhood, they’ve got the hardest jobs to do in this country and I think they’re amazing, great Americans.” 

Conservatives have long hated the suggestion that law enforcement might be plagued by systemic racism, and have for years clung to the bad-apple theory of police brutality. But systemic racism doesn’t mean that each and every member of law enforcement is a racist. It means, as Tapper suggested, that the system as a whole creates racially disparate outcomes—like the one in Ferguson, Missouri, another city famous for police shootings, that resulted in 95 percent of all jaywalking tickets going to African-Americans, even though they only made up 67 percent of the population. That’s not a problem caused by a few bad actors.

It’s always easier to blame the individual police officer for brutality than the structure that created him, which is what O’Brien did in another interview Sunday with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. He called for the Minneapolis police officers who stood by and watched their colleague kill George Floyd to be prosecuted, suggesting that their inaction showed “a lack of humanity.” 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate