Donald Trump returns to North Carolina to speak at Fraternal Order of Police meeting

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Donald Trump is returning to the battleground state of North Carolina Friday to address a meeting of the Fraternal Order of Police as he tries to portray himself as tougher on crime than his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, in the campaign’s closing months.

Trump is scheduled to address FOP’s National Board of Trustees fall meeting in Charlotte. The FOP, the world’s largest organization of law enforcement officers, endorsed Trump’s reelection bid in 2020, with its president saying on behalf of its 373,000 members that Trump had “made it crystal clear that he has our backs.”

The imagery of the former president and GOP nominee in a room of law enforcement officers offers Trump the platform to contrast their support with his characterization of Harris, a former San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general whom Trump has called the “ringleader” of a “Marxist attack on law enforcement” across the country.

“Kamala Harris will deliver crime, chaos, destruction and death,” Trump said last month in Michigan, one of many generalizations about an America under Harris. “You’ll see levels of crime that you’ve never seen before. … I will deliver law, order, safety and peace.”

Harris has showcased her status as a one-time top prosecutor in her home state, regularly saying “I know Donald Trump’s type” after she talks about the “perpetrators of all kinds” in her former roles.

She’s had some help with that messaging from two officers who were at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and have become surrogates for the Democratic ticket, with both stumping for her at various events across the country and reflecting on that day.

“Three and a half years later, the fight for democracy still continues,” former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn told a group of voters in Arizona this summer. “It still goes on. Donald Trump is still that threat. His deranged, self-centered, obsessive quest for power is the reason violent insurrectionists assaulted my coworkers and I.”

At the Democratic National Convention last month, former Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell — who retired from the force in 2022 due to his injuries sustained that day — said Trump had “summoned our attackers. … He betrayed us.”

Trump’s courting of the support of law officers also butts up against the sympathies that Trump has shown for those who have defied the orders of police, including a pledge to pardon those charged with beating officers during the Jan. 6 siege on the Capitol.

Judges and juries considering those cases have heard police officers describe being savagely attacked while defending the building. All told, about 140 officers were injured that day, making it “likely the largest single day mass assault of law enforcement” in American history, Matthew Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, has said.

Over 900 people have pleaded guilty to crimes connected to Jan. 6, and approximately 200 others have been convicted at trial. More than 950 people have been sentenced, with roughly two-thirds getting time behind bars — terms ranging from a few days to 22 years.

Trump has long expressed support for the Jan. 6 defendants. During a March rally in Ohio, he stood onstage, his hand raised in salute, as a recorded chorus of prisoners in jail for their roles in the Jan. 6 attack sang the national anthem. An announcer asked the crowd to please rise “for the horribly and unfairly treated January 6th hostages.”

“Those J6 warriors, they were warriors, but they were really, more than anything else, they’re victims of what happened,” Trump said at a rally in Nevada this summer. He also falsely claimed that police welcomed rioters into the Capitol, saying they told the crowd, “Go in, go in, go in, go in.”

“What a setup that was,” Trump said. “What a horrible, horrible thing.”

The FOP hasn’t issued its official endorsement for the 2024 election, but other police groups have already lined up behind Trump. During another Charlotte rally, Trump in July won the endorsement of the National Organization of Police Organizations, whose leadership lauded his “steadfast and very public support for our men and women on the front lines.”

In February, the International Union of Police Associations endorsed Trump, calling his support for officers “unmatched.” Last month, he won the backing of the Arizona Police Association, just days after the group endorsed Democrat Rep. Ruben Gallego over Trump ally Kari Lake in that state’s Senate race.

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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP