Trump in trouble: leaks show his desire to bring back public executions

Donald Trump has said a lot of wild things over the past eight years, so it should be no surprise to learn that he’s making headlines again this week over something that allegedly came out of his mouth.  

What will surprise you, however, is the outright scariness of the things Trump has been accused of saying to his closest allies in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election. 

The former President of the United States has been asking advisors what they think about bringing back firing squads and other gruesome methods of executions according to three sources that spoke with Asawin Suebsaeng and Patrick Reis of Rolling Stone. 

“He has even, one of the sources recounts, mused about televising footage of executions, including showing condemned prisoners in the final moments of their lives,” wrote Suebsaeng and Reis. 

“Specifically,” the Rolling Stone journalists added, “Trump has talked about bringing back death by firing squad, by hanging, and, according to two of the sources, possibly even by guillotine.”

“He has also, sources say, discussed group executions,” Suebsaeng and Reis continued, noting that Trump “floated these ideas while discussing planned campaign rhetoric and policy desires, as well as his disdain for President Biden’s approach to crime.”

Such allegations probably shouldn’t surprise anyone who's been paying attention to Trump's antics since he began his career as a politician, though. The former president has always been a bit of an authoritarian when it comes to criminals. 

Back in February 2018, then-Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte gave his country’s police forces the authority to execute suspected drug dealers on sight. Trump seemed to love this idea and allegedly commented that he would “love to have a law” that allowed the execution of drug dealers in the United States according to a 2018 report from CNBC’s Nyshka Chandran.

“He often jokes about killing drug dealers,” a senior official in the Trump administration told Axios in 2018. “He’ll say, 'You know the Chinese and Filipinos don’t have a drug problem. They just kill them.'”

In November 2022, Trump reiterated his desire to kill drug dealers when he stated that he would push for the death penalty for any individual caught selling drugs in America during his 2024 presidential campaign announcement. 

“Every drug dealer during his or her life on average will kill 500 people with the drugs they sell,” Trump said in his campaign announcement speech from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. 

“We’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts. Because it’s the only way,” Trump added. 

The most worrying thing about Trump's recent comments, however, is that he may intend to make “flashy, government-backed video ad” campaigns to accompany the return of certain types of execution in America according to Suebsaeng and Reis.

“The president believes this would help put the fear of God into violent criminals,” Suebsaeng and Reis’s source told them. 

“He wanted to do some of these [things] when he was in office, but for whatever reasons didn’t have the chance,” the source added. 

Suebsaeng and Reis did note that a Trump representative had denied the allegations that the former president had mused about bringing back firing squads and making videos of them available to the public.

“More ridiculous and fake news from idiots who have no idea what they’re talking about,” Trump’s spokesperson wrote in an email to the Rolling Stone journalists. “Either these people are fabricating lies out of thin air, or Rolling Stone is allowing themselves to be duped by these morons.”

Trump has yet to address the allegations himself, but you better believe we’ll hear something from the nincompoop’s Truth Social or Twitter account soon.