When three police officers were shot and killed in Baton Rouge last July, there was understandable national outrage — but there was increased fervor from many conservatives, led by Trump, who demanded “law and order,” immediately blamed President Barack Obama and pointed to the Black Lives Matter movement. The “cop killer” in this incident was a Black man.
Meanwhile, following the coldblooded killing of two police officers in Iowa this week in what investigators have called an “ambush-style” attack by a white, Confederate flag-waving man with a Trump-Pence sign on his front lawn, the outrage by Trump and his surrogates and supporters has been considerably more subdued.
After the Baton Rouge shootings, Rush Limbaugh on his radio show said BLM was “quickly becoming a terrorist group committing hate crimes.” Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and staunch Trump mouthpiece said on CBS: “[Black people] sing rap songs about killing police officers and they talk about killing police officers, and they yell it out at their rallies and the police officers hear it.”
