Donald Trump has made similar arguments to The purge – a dystopian horror film in which murder sometimes becomes legal – as a solution to crime in the United States, claiming it could be eradicated in “one really violent day”.
In an extreme display of demagogy even by his standards, Trump drew cheers from an audience in Erie, Pennsylvania, when he spoke of an uncontrolled crime wave that he said could be stopped “immediately.” by a “really harsh and unpleasant murder”. day” or “a difficult hour”.
“You see these guys coming out with air conditioners and refrigerators on their backs, which is the craziest thing,” Trump said: “And the police are not allowed to do their job. They are told: if you do something, you will lose your pension. They’re not allowed to do it because the progressive left won’t let them. The progressive left wants to destroy them and wants to destroy our country.”
In a speech that caused a stir on social media, the former president and Republican candidate added: “If you had a day, a really hard, unpleasant day, with pharmacies as an example, where, when they start dating …”. He then deviates from the subject to falsely accuse Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, of having introduced in California, while she was attorney general, a practice which exempted thieves from searching for objects worth less than 950 dollars.
Politico said the comment appeared to be a reference to Proposition 47, which downgraded certain violations of the law from felonies to misdemeanors and was signed into law by the state’s former Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, four years before Entry according to Harris.
Tying this question to his theme, Trump continued: “You saw kids coming in with calculators. They didn’t want to go over $950. They are standing with calculators adding. They are very, very intelligent people. They’re not that stupid, but you have to teach them. Now if you were having a really tough day…a tough hour, and I mean really tough. Word will spread and it will be over immediately.
The speech sparked a wave of comparisons with The purge, a 2013 film depicting the victory of a radical new party called America’s New Founding Fathers in the wake of an economic collapse, who then adopt drastic policies to end crime and unemployment.
Jon Lemire, host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, told viewers: “[Trump] He suggested there be an hour of violence, which sounds like the plot of the deeply dangerous film The Purge. We know to what extent his words have already inspired violence, such as, but not only, on January 6… This is an extraordinarily dangerous argument.”
In the film, the United States is depicted as being virtually free of crime and unemployment by 2022, following a policy of legalizing all crime, including murder, and making emergency services unavailable for a period of 12 hours each year.
Even before these comparisons, Trump’s campaign had denied that his comments constituted a political overture.
A campaign representative told Politico that the former president was “clearly joking.” Steven Cheung, the campaign’s communications director, said Trump was reaffirming his supposed credentials as a “law and order president.”
“She continues to reiterate the importance of enforcing existing laws,” he said: “Otherwise, it’s total anarchy, which is what Kamala Harris has created in some of these communities across the United States- United, particularly when she was Attorney General. [de California] when he emboldened criminals.
Trump, who was convicted of 34 crimes in a New York court in May on charges related to money payments to a porn actress, although he insisted he was the victim of a witch hunts, has the habit of demanding harsh punishments for others. accused of crimes.
Last year, he advocated for police to be allowed to shoot robbers. In 1989, she took out a full-page newspaper ad advocating the death penalty amid protests over the violent rape of a jogger in New York’s Central Park.
It was later discovered that the five black and Latino youths arrested and imprisoned for the crime had been wrongly convicted.
