President Donald Trump on Monday night compared the shooting of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man who was shot seven times in the back by a police officer, to a blunder in a golf tournament.
During a pre-taped interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, Trump asserted that among the “10,000 great acts” by the police, sometimes an officer can “choke” during an arrest.
“Shooting a guy in the back many times…I mean, couldn’t you have done something different, couldn’t you have wrestled him? In the meantime he might have been going for a weapon,” Trump told Ingraham. “You know there’s a whole big thing there.”
“But they choke,” he added. “Just like in a golf tournament they miss a three-foot putt–”
Ingraham cut off the President in an apparent attempt to rescue him from backlash over the jaw-dropping comparison.
“You’re not comparing it to golf because of course that’s what the media would say,” the Fox News host said.
“I’m saying people choke. And people are bad people. You’re both. You have some bad people and they choke,” Trump replied.
“You could be a police officer for 15 years and all of a sudden you’re confronted. You’ve got a quarter of a second to make a decision,” he continued. “If you don’t make the decision and you’re wrong, you’re dead. People choke under those circumstances and they make a bad decision.”
Trump’s comments come amid unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin after police officer Rusten Sheskey shot Blake in the back seven times during an arrest, leaving Blake paralyzed.
Trump frequently defends the police in response to protests over anti-Black police brutality, painting cops as largely innocent while also demonizing Black Lives Matter protesters, whom he describes as “thugs” in a “Marxist” movement.
Watch Trump below:
Trump compares cop shootings to being "golf tournament" in which the police "miss a three-foot putt." pic.twitter.com/g8jHzKSxzQ
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) September 1, 2020
