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Donald Trump was asked about his family and parenting style at an event in Detroit, Michigan on Thursday.
At first, his response was on-topic. But his answer quickly devolved into an eight-minute rant about drugs that ended in him explaining why some people convicted of fentanyl-related crimes should face the death penalty.
Trump was speaking at the Detroit Economic Club on Thursday afternoon when his outburst began. Businessman John Rakolta Jr., who interviewed the former president in front of club members, complimented his parenting style before asking how he made his children “so responsible.”
“You did a great job raising them...What did you do with your children to make them so responsible and so involved in everything that you do?” Rakolta asked Trump.
“Well, I’m fortunate in that, you know, they’re smart children,” Trump responded.
“I have smart children...I would always tell them, no drugs, no alcohol,” he added.
Before Rakolta could say anything else, Trump then began to discuss fentanyl, claiming he “had that problem almost solved with President Xi [Jinping]” while serving as president.
“Almost all of it comes through Mexico, and the maximum penalty is the death penalty, and he was going to impose that,” Trump said.
This isn’t the first time Trump has praised the idea of the death penalty for fentanyl-related offenses in China. He made a similar comment in 2018 while serving as president, according to CNN.
“One of the very exciting things to come out of my meeting with President Xi of China is his promise to me to criminalize the sale of deadly Fentanyl coming into the United States,” Trump tweeted at the time. “It will now be considered a ‘controlled substance.’ This could be a game changer on what is...considered to be the worst and most dangerous, addictive and deadly substance of them all.”
“Last year over 77,000 people died from Fentanyl. If China cracks down on this ‘horror drug,’ using the Death Penalty for distributors and pushers, the results will be incredible!” he continued.
The next year, nine people were imprisoned in China on charges related to smuggling fentanyl into the US. One of those arrested received a suspended death sentence. This marked one of the first cases of its kind between the US and China, Reuters reports.
In practice, that suspended death sentence will likely be commuted to a life sentence, a Chinese official said at the time, according to Reuters.
Trump went on to blame Biden for his plans going ‘down the tubes’ and explained why the death penalty could help solve “a lot of the problem.”
“And then we had the transfer power, and this guy came in, and he didn’t know what to do with everything, so that went down the tubes,” Trump said. “But one of the first things I’m going to do is talk to him about that, because they were going to give the death penalty to anybody sending fentanyl into this country, and that would have really solved a lot of the problem.”
“First time I met [President Xi], I said, ‘Do you have a drug problem?’ ‘No, no, no,’ 1.4 billion people. ‘And why don’t you have a drug problem?’ He says, ‘Death penalty. Quick trial...The dealer is immediately put on trial,’” Trump continued.
He ended his rant by, again, calling for the death penalty for fentanyl-related offenses.
“Everybody in this room knows a lot of people that...lost a child to fentanyl, and that wouldn’t have happened if we had the death penalty,” the former president said. “But the country’s going to have to tell us that they’re ready for it because you know, it’s a pretty big step.”
The death sentence can only be handed down if someone has been convicted of a capital offense. These offenses include murder, treason, genocide, as well as the killing or kidnapping of a Congressperson, the President or a Supreme Court Justice.
Notably, drug trafficking is not a capital offense.
Since 1971, more than 1,600 people have been executed by the US government. At least 200 people executed in the last 50 years were wrongfully convicted, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which is an average of four people per year.
