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Donald Trump has suggested that those who desecrate the US flag should spend a year behind bars.
The former president made the comments during a free-wheeling call to Fox & Friends on Fox News on Thursday morning, where he also attacked his new rival for the White House, Kamala Harris. His rant about the flag comes after protesters outraged at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the U.S. burned the American flag as well as an effigy of Netanyahu on the streets of Washington, D.C., in protest of the Biden administration sending military aid to Israel amid its war in Gaza.
“I think you should get a one-year jail sentence if you do anything to desecrate the American flag,” Trump said on Fox. “Now, people will say, ‘Oh, it’s unconstitutional.’ Those are stupid people. Those are stupid people that say that.”
Trump claimed that if Congress passed a law instituting such a rule, the flag burning would cease. In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. Johnson that flag burning is protected under the First Amendment.
The former president added that Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un “[look] at us like we’re a bunch of babies.”
“It’s impossible for that to happen in their countries,” Trump said of the autocracies. “We look so bad for the world, that was a disgraceful display yesterday.”
When asked about his plan to end the war in Gaza, Trump said he wants Netanyahu “to finish up, and get it done quickly. You’ve got to get it done quickly because they’re getting decimating with this publicity.”
“Israel’s not very good with public relations, I’ll tell you that,” he added before going on to claim that the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, nor the war in Ukraine, would have happened had he been president.
Trump was also asked about Project 2025, a proposed 900-page Republican Party platform put together by the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation. While Trump has attempted to distance himself from the document and the ideas it espouses, critics have noted that it was authored by former Trump administration officials, some of whom are likely to return in prominent roles if Trump is elected to a second term.
Trump said the document was authored by “very, very conservative people,” adding that some of the “points are fine” while others are “absolutely ridiculous.”
After sharing his opinion on the document, Trump claimed to have “nothing” to do with it and that he’s never seen it.
“They wrote something that I disagree [with] in many cases, and in some cases you agree,” he said.
The former president went on to say that he assumed that he would be running against Vice President Kamala Harris, who’s now the presumptive Democratic nominee after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.
“I knew there was a palace coup going on,” Trump said.
Responding to attacks from Harris comparing him to fraudsters and abusers of women, Trump said: “I would love to be nice but I’m dealing against real garbage.”
He went on to use the same attack strategy he used on Biden with Harris, claiming that the Department of Justice has been “weaponized” against him.
“They weaponized it to go after a political opponent. She was very much in charge,” Trump said, without providing any evidence for his claims. “She was a prosecutor, but she was a failed prosecutor. She put a lot of people in jail that should have never been there. She put people in jail that were political enemies. She is bad news.”
