As he often has in the past, Trump complained at the rally that police are “not allowed to do their job” because of political pressure and that crime is rampant in President Joe Biden’s America as a result. (It is not.) And that’s when he proposed his “Purge”-esque solution: If police were allowed “one real rough, nasty” and “violent day,” he said, crime would be eliminated “immediately.” He was taken enough by the proposition that he returned to it later, saying, “One rough hour — and I mean real rough — the word will get out and it will end immediately, you know? It will end immediately.”
A Trump campaign official told Politico afterward that he was “clearly just floating it in jest.”
That’s true, in a way. If you watch it you can see that he’s just throwing stuff out there in his usual wannabe standup comedian fashion. But then, the fact that he thinks that’s a jest is more than bad enough all by itself. His nauseating reveling in dreams of violence is one of the worst things about him. It’s like falling into a septic tank, watching him bloviate and “joke” about all the disgusting things he would like to do. His fantasies are just as revolting as his “serious” plans.
Also, the fact that it is in a sense just talk doesn’t mean he wouldn’t do it. It just means that he can’t do it right this second.
The Trump campaign’s “in jest” excuse should be dismissed. As I’ve written before, for the better part of a decade Trump has used a comic tone and “I’m just kidding” caveats to float trial balloons for his most extreme ideas.
Even though Trump obviously wouldn’t have the authority as president to permit the police to indulge in a day of extreme violence, that he’s articulating the idea in public at all is still significant — and corrosive. It signals an attitude toward police misconduct that helps to set the Republican agenda — at federal and state levels — on legislation related to police reform.
And it encourages everyone else to think this way. And it shows the world what an evil human we once elected president. In short it taints everything. Every damn thing.
Comments
10 responses to “One rough hour”
Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut:
Been there, done that.
Back in the day, England hanged thieves. So step one for a thief was to kill the victim. Made it less likely that they’d get caught, and the penalty was the same either way.
California got to the same place with its three-strikes law. Three felony convictions in California is a mandatory life sentence. Cop pulls over a car for a traffic violation. Driver has two felony convictions and (say) drugs in the car. Cop walks up, driver shoots him dead. Nothing to lose.
MAGA = Mobilize Authoritarian Gestapo Aggression.
“I was just joking when I was making that appeal to White Nationalists!” “Pinkie swear!”
There is data on this.
Harsher sentences don’t do much to reduce crime.
Higher clearance rates (fraction of crimes for which an arrest is made) do reduce crime.
What’s the current death rate in US Police forces? As an outsider, it seems quite high.
Just how many more dead or maimed cops does Trump think the nation can stand before the Police collapse?
@Rev,
Here are the statistics from 2020. It’s pretty high–13.4 per 100,000–but that makes it only the 18th deadliest occupation in the US. I couldn’t find any data on how that compares to other countries (granted, I didn’t dig too deeply), but I did find this: the US is 28th in the world in killings by law enforcement, at 33.1 per 10 million, just between Colombia and Mali. (data for the US from 2022)*. Just looking at some of the countries at the top of the list–Venezuela, El Salvador, Syria–I’m not convinced that police killings do much to lower crime.
*Luxembourg had what seems like a remarkably high rate in 2018–16.9 per 10 million–but that represents one person killed.
Someone who says out loud that he’d love to suspend due process isn’t someone you want to have in power. At all. I’m sure your Founding Fathers had something to say about that. Oh yeah, it’s called THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, which, in the past, Trump has sworn to defend. Guess it didn’t take. I’m a goddamn foreigner and I know his tiny mind’s little thought experiment is completely illegal, and exactly the sort of abuse of government power the framers were so very keen to prevent when establishing your Republic. They had very different ideas about what would make America “great.” Besides, Trump has already given America “one real rough, nasty” and “violent day.” That was January 6, 2021. He shouldn’t be given a chance for a do-over.
But this kind of daydream is not surprising coming from him, given his attempts at freelance, millionaire vigilantism with the Central Park Five. And ironic, with how much he himself has benefitted from due process. Never pick up a weapon you’re not prepared to give to your opponents. Turnabout is fair play. Maybe the people he’s stiffed over the years stringing him up could have been a deterrent to other prospective fraudsters. Same principle, just wearing a suit and tie for gang colours. Then again, laws are for other people, and Donald Trump, president or not, is above the law.
[…] a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on One rough […]
YNNB, there’s only one phrase that’s important in the Constitution, and that is “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged.” Never mind the rest of the stuff, it’s all boring rules about how to setup the government and what the government can’t do. Executive privilege means that the president can do what he wants because he’s the boss.