PHILADELPHIA — Former President Donald Trump said at his rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Sunday that there should be “one really violent day” for policing crime in the United States.
“One rough hour, and I mean real rough, the word will get out and it will end immediately,” Trump said to cheers from the audience at a convention center on Lake Erie Sunday afternoon.
Trump’s comments serve as another example of allusions he’s made to endorsing violence — including extreme suggestions for addressing crime — before, during, and after his presidency. In Philadelphia, they have raised concerns over public safety and respect for the law.
“It is disgraceful that we have a president, a former president, and somebody who’s aspiring to the presidency, who routinely encourages violence and encourages a lawlessness that we don’t need in our country,” State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, D-Philadelphia, said.
“Donald Trump comes to Pennsylvania again and again and again to lie, to shred the facts and truth any chance he gets,” Kenyatta added.
A Trump campaign official told Politico that the remarks were not indicative of a new policy proposal and that Trump was “clearly just floating it in jest.”
“President Trump has always been the law-and-order President and he continues to reiterate the importance of enforcing existing laws,” Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign’s communications director, said in a statement to The Philadelphia Inquirer, adding that Harris’ prosecutorial record as California’s attorney general created “all-out anarchy.”
The former president spent a sizable amount of time at his rally Sunday harshly criticizing immigrants and Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump suggested Harris is “mentally impaired” for the second time in as many days, despite facing backlash for the false claim.
As he routinely does, Trump ripped Harris for her record as San Francisco’s district attorney, accusing her of lax consequences for shoplifting before suggesting that “one real, rough, nasty day” at businesses, like drug stores, would be a remedy to crime.
Michael Coard, a Philadelphia-based criminal defense attorney, radio host, and justice advocate, said he was shocked and afraid after hearing Trump endorse violent policing — and even more confounded that his comments have not disqualified him as a candidate.
“Where Trump has taken American politics is absolutely despicable,” said Coard. “What he has said would have torpedoed any political candidate’s career before it even started.”
Coard likened Trump’s comments to his remarks to supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, in the hours before they stormed the Capitol.
Trump told the crowd at his rally in D.C. on Jan. 6: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”
The Trump campaign has maintained that neither Trump nor his supporters ever engaged in an insurrection.
Trump also used violent political rhetoric in May 2020 when the then-president tweeted: “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” in reference to skirmishes between protesters and police in Minneapolis after the murder of George Floyd.
It’s a phrase that has racial and violent undertones dating back to the civil rights era. Trump claimed that he did not know the history of the phrase.
Trump stoked controversy with inflammatory and racially charged rhetoric long before ascending to the White House. A member of the Exonerated 5 — known as the Central Park 5 — told a crowd in Philadelphia last Friday that he will “never forget” Trump taking out full-page advertisements in major newspapers calling for New York to adopt the death penalty after the five Black and Latino boys were falsely accused of assaulting and raping a white woman jogging in Central Park in 1989.
Coard said he fears Trump’s comments on Sunday could lead to the persecution of a swath of disenfranchised members of American society.
Trump is “now rallying cops to violently attack nonviolent alleged shoplifters,” Coard said. “This is the first time as a voter that I’ve been afraid.”
