Calling for law and order was never controversial — until President Trump did it. And now that his message is resonating in America, the media has decided: restoring order isn’t just controversial, but racist too. In one of the most absurd attacks on the administration since June, the Associated Press has decided that public safety is the cry of the prejudiced. But by column’s end, it was their own biases that were laid bare, not Trump’s.

Of course, this AP tried to pass off this liberal libel as “analysis” instead of an editorial, which is where a partisan rant like this one belongs. Comparing him to Richard Nixon in 1968, Steve Peoples and Zeke Miller begin a methodical condemnation of the White House for daring to object to the violence. “The president’s shifting message, which draws from Nixon’s half-century-old political playbook, carries risks just nine weeks before Election Day,” they claim before savaging him for the coronavirus response and economy. The only reason he’s invoking this “law-and-order rhetoric,” they argue, is to “win white voters,” which is not only untrue — but offensive.

If anything’s racist, it’s suggesting that only white people care about public safety. The reality is, black and minority neighborhoods have more to lose when our streets are overrun than anyone. “Defunding the police is the project of a small number of wealthy young radicals who have never lived in a world without the police and have no idea what can happen to them without the cops,” Daniel Greenfield argues. “Black people who live in poorer areas know exactly what can and does happen every week. As the president said, and I can confirm from years on the police force, "If you look at the black community, they want the police to help them stop crime.”

I’ve seen it first-hand in the intercity neighborhoods of Baton Rouge as a police officer; the mothers and grandmothers who want their children to be able to play safely outside. They were tired of the drug dealers and gangs putting the lives of their children at risk.

“By backing law and order,” the polls say, “President Trump is standing with the nearly three in four African-Americans who are happy with their local police departments over the less than one in five who aren’t.” To claim, as the AP did, that Trump is “peddling notions of dangerous mobs of largely African American rioters” is an outright lie. Or, in Ken Blackwell’s words, nothing but “rubbish, hogwash, liberal psychobabble.” “It’s crazy,” he said on “Washington Watch.”

“They wouldn’t know if [the truth] if smacked him upside the back of the head. Look… this is what Trump has exposed. Public safety is not a political strategy. It is a leadership obligation. It’s a constitutional obligation for elected officials to uphold and defend the constitution against enemies, foreign and domestic… What has backfired on the Left and on Biden and the Democrats is that they have, in fact, chosen anarchy and disruption — and therefore they have decided they have a joined themselves with Antifa and Black Lives Matter.”

And if they think that’s scoring them civil rights points, they’re wrong. This was not the path of Martin Luther King Jr. or any of the great leaders of the 1960s, Ken argues. “[Dr. King] said then we were at a point where we had to choose between chaos or community. Right [now], in 2020 American, we have a choice: Do we choose chaos — or do we choose public safety and community?” Based on the surging support for President Trump, Americans want the latter. Zogby, the Democracy Institute, Rasmussen — they’ve all picked up on the country’s anxiety over the Democrats’ indifference to the unrest.

“Is Biden so compromised by the politics of his own nomination that he cannot fault Antifa, BLM, and by association the Left-wing, local blue-state district attorneys general, city councils, mayors, and governors who appease and encourage the urban war zones?” Victor Davis Hanson wonders. “If he did so, would he bleed support from among his new socialist coalition with Bernie Sanders and the squad?” Right now, he warned, “The street brigades and their various enablers know that they represent a key constituency in the new socialist Democratic Party. And so they will riot and burn until Election Day in the belief, as narcissists, that they are winning converts…”

And yet, they’re not. “Biden and the hard Left have no idea how badly the violence is hurting their cause.” As Ken pointed out, the message from America has been clear: “We want to be safe.” And more than that, they’re starting to realize that what’s manifesting in the streets, in the smoldering buildings, in the rioting and looting, is really what’s been happening culturally under the watch of many of these Democratic governors. They’ve seen their policies that have led to the dissolution of the family, that core unit of society. And many of them may be thinking — like we are — there’s going to be nothing left of this country if we allow them to remain in control.

Originally published here.

This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.