A host of conservatives officials who were once vocal about supporting for law enforcement are suddenly joining the “defund” movement after the FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Monday. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) tweeted “DEFUND THE FBI” Monday, a far cry from a March 2021 tweet in which she insisted “We must #BACKTHEBLUE!” On an episode of Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) fumed, “This is, in my opinion, the most defining moment of the Joe Biden presidency. So if that’s the diagnosis, my assessment is the antidote has to be not one more damn penny for this administrative state that has been weaponized against our people in a very fascist way.” The new messaging is at odds with the conservative tendency to unequivocally support the police, a party line that snowballed during the BLM protests of 2020. Kari Lake, Arizona’s Republican gubernatorial candidate, went a step further. “We must fire the Federal Government,” she said in a statement.
