A top House Republican promoted an altered video to make it sound like Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden endorses defunding the police. (He doesn't.) What does it say about President Donald Trump's reelection campaign that its surrogates must resort to literal cut-and-paste lies to trick people into supporting him?

The episode contains a lesson for Democrats: It's time to retire the word "defund" once and for all. Democrats may argue that it's just shorthand for a shift of police responsibilities away from social services, but Trump's people will miss no opportunity to twist it.

Moderate Democrats say the defund movement is something far more nuanced. The fact is, police today are often called upon not to fight crime but to act as social workers, marriage counselors, homeless service providers. Most cops aren't adequately trained for these roles. There is a case to be made for separating (and separately funding) those duties, to free up officers to do what should be their primary responsibility of fighting crime.

Part of the problem is that some on the left insist that "defund the police" should mean exactly what it sounds like — to have less police presence, period — because, as one misguided activist put it in a New York Times op-ed in June, "Fewer police officers equals fewer opportunities for them to brutalize and kill people."

This simplistic approach to the complicated problem of police brutality would ultimately hurt the very people it seeks to help: poor Black residents of crime-ridden neighborhoods. They would be the first sacrificed to violent crime on the altar of "fewer police." The need for police reform is urgent, but America's cities, including and especially St. Louis, need more warm bodies patrolling the streets, not fewer.

Biden knows this. He has unequivocally supported police reform but adamantly opposes police defunding in any literal sense. Just the opposite, in fact: Biden's criminal justice plan includes a $300 million increase in funding for police hiring and community-oriented training. There's no way to lump Biden in with the radical defunders short of outright lying.

Unfortunately, Trump's team isn't above that. The clip promoted by Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana, of a Biden interview on the issue was edited to make it appear Biden answered a question in support of defunding police, when in fact he said the opposite. Twitter flagged the video, and Scalise ultimately deleted it. "Look, it shouldn't have been edited," he admitted to Fox News — then he went on to repeat the lie that Biden wants police defunding.

Trump and his minions will repeat that and other lies endlessly, especially as his poll ratings keep declining. Democrats should stop giving them ammunition. They should end this exercise of trying to explain what they think defunding means, and just renounce the word altogether.

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