Trump: How America is going to hell
... as he calls for the death penalty for drug dealers
DONALD Trump warned America is ‘going to hell’ in a speech marking the first time he returned to Washington since leaving office.
In what sounded like potential policy announcements should he run for the White House in 2024, the former president painted an apocalyptic picture of the country in a speech a few miles from where his supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6 last year.
He called for a law and order crackdown, including the death penalty for drug dealers and rounding up the homeless into out- oftown camps, while saying that police should be ‘tough and nasty’ if they needed to.
The speech came as the Department of Justice reportedly stepped up its investigation into Mr Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. The Washington Post reported that prosecutors have for the first time asked his former aides about conversations they had with Mr Trump, 76.
His speech amounted to a soft launch for his 2024 election campaign, though he has not formally announced his intention to run because it would tie him up in a raft of disclosure and financing rules.
Echoing his ‘American carnage’ inauguration speech, Mr Trump told the America First Policy Institute he had to ‘save our country’.
‘It is going to hell, it’s very unsafe,’ the 45th president said. ‘We are a failing nation. The dangerously roam our streets. We are living in such a different country for one primary reason: there is no longer respect for the law and there certainly is no order. Our country is now a cesspool of crime.
‘We have blood, death and suffering on a scale once unthinkable because of the Democrat Party’s effort to destroy and dismantle law enforcement throughout America.’
Mr Trump praised Chinese president Xi Jinping for the way drug dealers were given sentences in ‘two hours’. And he talked of a ‘death penalty for the people who sell drugs’, adding: ‘You execute a drug dealer and you’ll save 500 lives.
‘It sounds horrible, doesn’t it? But those [countries with the death penalty] are the ones that don’t have any problem. It doesn’t take 15 years in court. It goes quickly.’
During the 90-minute speech Mr Trump also urged governors to ‘send the National Guard to the most dangerous neighbourhoods’.
He called for an ‘all-out effort to defeat violent crime, and be tough, nasty and mean if we have to be’.
Mr Trump would bring back stopand-frisk questioning policies, put a police car on ‘every corner’ and move the homeless to ‘large parcels of inexpensive land in the outer reaches of the cities’.
The speech also gave an insight into the potential rivalry between Mr Trump and his former vice president Mike Pence, who may run against him in 2024.
In a separate address earlier in the day at the Young America’s Foundation in Washington, Mr Pence said that ‘elections are about the future’ and that Republicans should not ‘look back’.
‘There is no respect for law and order’