'Let's go!': Trump snaps when pushed on false claim about Biden and police

Donald Trump testily lashed out at Chris Wallace after the Fox News Sunday host, during an interview to air this weekend, called out the president's false statement that Joe Biden wants to defund all police departments, our Washington bureau chief John T Bennett reports.

"Let's go!" the president said forcefully, appearing to look at off-camera staff and give an order for someone to retrieve a Democratic document he had just misquoted.

"Get me the charter, please," a clearly agitated Mr Trump said. At the end of the brief-but-testy exchange, Mr Wallace looks bemused as he simply says, "Alright..."

At issue in a 46-second clip posted online by Fox is a policy pact the former vice president and Senator Bernie Sanders, the progressive Vermont senator who was his final primary foe, released recently. Mr Trump falsely claims in the brief snippet of the interview that Mr Biden and Mr Sanders said in that document they want to "defund" and "abolish" police departments.



Trump snaps when pushed on false claim about Biden and police

Donald Trump reacted angrily after Fox News host Chris Wallace called him out on false claims that his presidential rival Joe Biden is calling to defund the police in a policy pact with Bernie Sanders, shouting off-screen, presumably to an aide: “Let’s go! Get me the charter, please.”
The interview, which will be broadcast in full on Sunday, came as Portland’s mayor demanded that the president remove militarised federal agents from the city after reports of officers snatching residents in unmarked cars. Mayor Ted Wheeler accused Mr Trump of using the military presence to bolster his sagging poll numbers.


The president was also accused of “furthering racial entrenchment” by the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, which denounced his “abhorrent” threat to repeal an Obama-era initiative requiring local governments to address historic patterns of racial segregation. “Your home will go down in value and crime rates will rapidly rise,” Mr Trump said, claiming communities would “go to hell”.

Trump accused of 'furthering racial entrenchment'

Donald Trump's pledge to roll back an Obama-era regulation designed to eliminate racial disparities in the suburbs has drawn criticism from fair housing advocates, who label it a blatant attempt to play racist politics and appeal to white voters in the final weeks before the election.

Mr Trump has repeatedly threatened to repeal a 2015 initiative that requires local governments to address historic patterns of racial segregation. On Thursday, he said the regulation "will totally destroy the beautiful suburbs" and demolish property values by forcing low-income housing construction in suburban areas.

"Your home will go down in value and crime rates will rapidly rise," he said. "People have worked all their lives to get into a community, and now they're going to watch it go to hell. Not going to happen, not while I'm here."

Housing advocates have suggested such rhetoric is both historically familiar and particularly incendiary as America grapples with a national reckoning over entrenched racial iniquities.

"He's flatly saying that property values will go down and crime will increase if black people move into your neighbourhoods," said Diane Yentel, president of the National Low-Income Housing Coalition. "It's especially abhorrent for Trump to be furthering racial entrenchment of segregated communities at this moment in our history."

AP