Donald Trump is a disturbed individual with a strong penchant for violence. The biggest supporting evidence of this would obviously be his incitement of a bloody insurrection that left multiple people dead because he couldn’t handle losing the 2020 election. But there are so many smaller ones as well, including but not limited to his public encouragement of police officers to knock suspects’ heads against the sides of their squad cars; his endorsement of assaulting reporters; his violent fantasies about punching a rally attendee in the face; and his reported desire to have the military shoot racial-justice protesters. But nothing quite compares to his latest musings about bringing back banned methods of capital punishment—and even videotaping it for public consumption.
Yes, Rolling Stone reports that the ex-president—who is hoping to become president again in 2024—has recently been telling close associates that he wants to bring back firing squads, hangings, and “possibly even the guillotine,” should he return to the White House. (He has also apparently “discussed group executions.”) According to a person familiar with the matter, late last year, Trump “privately mused” about “creating a flashy, government-backed video-ad campaign that would accompany a federal revival of these execution methods.” The videos would reportedly include “footage from these new executions, if not from the exact moments of death.”
All of this is, of course, entirely believable: At a rally in October, he told supporters the government should execute drug dealers by shooting them, and then “send the bullet to the family” and make them “pay for the cost of the bullet.” To that end, a former White House official told Rolling Stone that Trump “had a particular affinity for the firing squad, because it seemed more dramatic, rather than how we do it, putting a syringe in people and putting them to sleep.” This person added: “President Trump would explicitly say that he’d love a country that was totally an ‘eye for an eye’—that’s a direct quote—criminal-justice system, and he’d talk about how the ‘right’ way to do it is to line up criminals and drug dealers before a firing squad.“
During his time in office, Trump oversaw—and demanded—the execution of more people than any other administration in more than 120 years, and his administration executed more Americans in a one-year period than every state combined. His was also the first administration since the 1880s to put people to death during a lame-duck period, and in January 2021, when it was clear Joe Biden was going to become president, executed three people in four days. In an interview, former attorney general Bill Barr told Rolling Stone that had Trump won a second term, more people would have been put to death. Presumably, should he win in 2024, that will happen to at least some of the 44 people currently on federal death row.
A spokesperson for Trump denied to Rolling Stone that the ex-president has talked about putting out an execution video, calling it “more ridiculous and fake news from idiots who have no idea what they’re talking about.” Asked about bringing back firing squads and other methods of capital punishment, the same spokesman denied nothing, and instead referred to Trump’s remarks while announcing his candidacy for president. “Every drug dealer during his or her life, on average, will kill 500 people with the drugs they sell, not to mention the destruction of families,” he said last year. “We’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their pain.”
