Even though attempted murder is not one of his 34 felony convictions, Donald Trump has never been coy about his longing to kill people. During the 2016 campaign, Trump famously mused in a speech, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters." In 2020, he threatened to murder Black Lives Matter protesters by tweeting, "When the looting starts, the shooting starts." Throughout and after his presidency, there was a steady stream of stories from aides alarmed at how Trump would repeatedly ask if they would kill people for him. He requested bayonets and spikes on the southern border, hoping for grisly deaths of migrants crossing. He had Oval Office meetings in which he demanded the military "crack skulls" and "shoot" lefty protesters. Former Attorney General Bill Barr appeared to confirm reports that Trump regularly ordered him to "execute" government staff for speaking to the media. Barr did pretend Trump wasn't serious, despite how often he circled back to the topic of extra-legal executions.
Even before he got into politics, Trump's bloodthirstiness was on public display. In the 1980s, Trump demanded the death penalty for five young men falsely convicted of rape, a position he did not back down from, even after they were formally exonerated. (Trump himself was found liable for sexual assault last year by a jury, but does not feel he should face his own recommended punishment.) In 1990, Trump praised the Chinese government for killing peaceful protesters in Tiananmen Square. In the same interview, he lamented that the Soviet Union did not murder enough people, calling the Soviet government "out of control" for allowing more dissent than they had in the past.
