Trump's 'law and order' message more complicated this time around on campaign trail

Presumptive Republican nominee for president Donald Trump called for "law and order" while attending the wake of a slain police officer on Thursday, even as he faces his own criminal trials and a judge this week citing his history of "incendiary" remarks that have threatened the safety of public officials.

Trump spoke after visiting the family of New York Police Department officer Jonathan Diller. Trump called Diller's shooting death "such a sad, sad event, such a horrible thing."

"We have to get back to law and order. We have to do a lot of things differently. This is not working. This is happening too often," Trump said.

Trump did not elaborate on what he meant. On social media this week, Trump called the suspect in Diller's shooting a "thug" and noted that police said the shooter had numerous prior arrests, declaring that he "NEVER should have been let back out on the streets."

Trump has seized on violent crime in his previous presidential campaigns — his 2017 inauguration speech famously promised an end to "American carnage" — but things are different on the campaign trail this time.

The former president has been criminally indicted four times: for offences related to his efforts to prevent his 2020 election loss, for his handling of classified documents at his properties after leaving office and on allegations of falsifying business records to cover up payments that prevented damaging information coming to light during the 2016 campaign.

Legislation that addressed violent crime was not a hallmark of Trump's presidency. The Trump administration banned bump stocks, a gun accessory, after the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history in Las Vegas in 2017, though the legality of that measure is currently being weighed by the Supreme Court.

In 2018, Trump also met with several students and their families from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., promising meaningful gun control reform after a mass shooting in February of that year, but efforts from the White House and in Congress fizzled. Trump soon after appeared at the National Rifle Association's annual convention, promising to defend expansive gun ownership rights. He is the only president to ever appear at NRA events.

Gun control legislation at the federal level, albeit modest, was signed into law for the first time in more than two decades by President Joe Biden in 2022 after high-profile shooting incidents in Texas and Buffalo, N.Y.

But Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung, in a post on X, drew a contrast between the candidate visiting Diller's family and Biden, who Chung said was attending a fundraiser Thursday night with "elitist, out-of-touch celebrity benefactors."

As president, Biden visited NYPD headquarters and spoke to officers after two line-of-duty deaths in close succession in 2022. While vice-president, Biden delivered a eulogy at a 2014 service for NYPD officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, who were gunned down in their patrol car.

"Our hearts go out, obviously, to the officer's family and the broader NYPD family, who have tragically lost one of their own," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday of Diller's death.

Trump has deplored crime in cities led by Democratic politicians.

"On Joe Biden's watch, violent crime has skyrocketed in virtually every American city," his campaign said in a statement earlier this month.