During Tuesday night’s Fox Business debate, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) answered a question about a Democrat in Congress he admires by going on an unprompted rant against what he sees as Democrats’ lack of support for police.
“I’ll tell you the thing that disturbs me the most — what’s going on with the Democratic Party in Washington,” he said, ignoring the moderators’ question. “They’re not standing behind our police officers in this country. They’re allowing lawlessness to reign in this country.”
“I spent seven years of my life in law enforcement,” he continued, saying to the country’s 700,000 police officers that “when President Christie is in the Oval Office, I’ll have your back.”
Later in the debate, Christie again criticized President Barack Obama’s relationship with police, answering a question about veterans by saying that Obama has not stood behind law enforcement as commander-in-chief.
Christie has been one of many Republican presidential candidates who have said that Democrats’ support for the Black Lives Matter movement is a repudiation of police. Last month, he said on CBS that Obama is encouraging lawlessness and “justifying” the movement which he says has called for the killing of law enforcement officials.
When pressed on whether the Black Lives Matter movement shouldn’t be justified, Christie said: “I don’t believe that movement should be calling for the murder of police officers.”
Although false, that line has been repeated by many of the GOP candidates. In Iowa last month, Ted Cruz told ThinkProgress that the movement is “disgraceful.”
“If you look at the Black Lives Matter movement, one of the most disturbing things is more than one of their protests have embraced rabid rhetoric, rabid anti-police language, literally suggesting and embracing and celebrating the murder of police officers,” he said.
Contrary to Republican arguments, 2015 is actually on pace to have second-lowest number of police deaths in decades, according to the Washington Post. Police officer deaths have been declining in recent years — in 2014, 51 police officers died in the line of duty, while 1,108 people were killed by police officers over the same period of time.