Trump To Address 'Disparities' At Dallas Event

Updated at 11:56 a.m ET

President Trump on Thursday will meet with pastors, law enforcement officials and small-business owners at a church in Dallas and is expected to discuss plans for a national "holistic revitalization and recovery," a White House official said.

Attorney General William Barr is also traveling with the president.

In his latest response to protests over police brutality, sparked by the May 25 killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Trump is expected to discuss ways to address "historic economic, health and justice disparities in American communities" at the event, the official said.

This comes as demonstrators and officials across the country have called for additional visibility to the social and economic hardships faced by many racial minorities in the country.

It was unclear how detailed Trump's discussion would be. On Wednesday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Trump had been working on "proposals to address the issues that the protesters had raised across the country, legitimate issues" for 10 days but said she was not certain it would be revealed on Thursday.

Trump is also set to hold a fundraising event while in Dallas, his first in-person fundraiser since the coronavirus restricted such events.

The Dallas trip comes as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are working on legislation to address violence and racial profiling in policing.

Democrats in the House have introduced the wide-ranging Justice in Policing Act, which, among other actions, would ban the use of chokeholds and lift restrictions on pursuing cases of misconduct against officers.

Senate Republicans, led by South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, are working on their own set of changes. Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, who is part of the group working on the GOP plan, says they are focusing on increasing transparency, particularly in cases of use of force, and funding for body cameras. In an interview with NPR, Lankford also mentioned a lack of diversity in law enforcement recruiters and bolstering efforts to have police departments "match the ethnicity of the actual community."

Trump, who has campaigned on "law and order" themes and has been backed by police unions, has faced condemnation over his response to the protests. Polling shows most Americans think Trump has increased racial tensions.

Trump held a roundtable with law enforcement officials on Monday at the White House, where he suggested that he was open to ideas for how policing can be done "in a much more gentle fashion," but he has resisted suggestions that systemic racism is a problem in policing.

Trump has also sought to focus on his administration's economic and criminal justice reform initiatives, saying that a strong economy was the "greatest thing that could happen for race relations."

In the Wednesday briefing, McEnany took the same approach, declining to say whether the president believed there was a problem with institutional racism within the United States and instead pointing to what she described as Trump's belief in the fundamental goodness of most police officers.

"There are injustices that we have seen, clearly. That tape of George Floyd was inexcusable, gut wrenching, difficult to watch, and it was really a beautiful funeral yesterday, all the great testimonies to his life. We recognize those injustices," McEnany said.

"But this president knows fundamentally that most police officers in this country are good."

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