Remember when Trump shared his scary solution to solve crime in America?

The 2024 Election is about to come to an end in a few weeks, but before it does, let's take a look at one of the more concerning things Donald Trump proposed this election cycle: his idea about how the United States could solve its crime problem.

On September 29th, Donald Trump made a concerning comment about how the United States could solve its crime problem. He suggested one day of violence could be the answer to eradicating crime.    

While speaking in front of a crowd of his supporters in Erie, Pennsylvania, Trump stated that the country needed “one really violent day” and then all crime would stop immediately according to several news outlets. 

However, before you can understand the gravity of the former president’s remark, you need to understand what he was talking about before Trump floated his ridiculous idea. 

Trump spent a few minutes of his speech in Pennsylvania talking about how the country needed to let police departments do their job according to Rolling Stone, which provided a transcription of his remarks. 

Trump told the crowd: “We have to let the police do their job, and if they have to be extraordinarily rough. And you know, the funny thing with all of that stuff, look at the department store, same thing.”

“You see these guys walking out with air conditioners, with refrigerators on their back, the craziest thing, and the police aren’t allowed to do their job,” Trump said before he claimed police officers were being threatened out of doing their jobs. 

According to the former president's remarks, he claimed officers had been threatened with the loss of their pension, family, house, and car if they acted to stop crime, something he said police officers wanted to do but were not allowed to because the liberal left wouldn’t let them do it. 

“They’re not allowed to do it because the liberal left won’t let him do it. The liberal left wants to destroy them, and they want to destroy our country,” it was after these remarks that Trump floated the idea of having one violent day of police retaliation. 

“Now, if you had one really violent day,” Trump said. “Like a guy like Mike Kelly, put him in charge… put him in charge for one day… One rough hour, and I mean real rough, and the word will get out and it will end immediately. End immediately,” Trump said.

Trump didn’t provide any more details about what he meant before he went on to insult President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris but Trump's campaign director of communication Steven Cheung tried to clarify the former president's comments later in a statement. 

Chueng explained in a written statement to Politico: “Trump has always been the law and order President and he continues to reiterate the importance of enforcing existing laws.”

“Otherwise, it’s all-out anarchy,” Cheung continued, adding that anarchy was what the Vice President had brought to “communities across America, especially during her time as [California] Attorney General when she emboldened criminals.”

Unfortunately, Trump’s comments added to a growing list of problematic things the former president has said about how the police should deal with criminals. However, this time his remarks were so extreme they were compared to the 2013 fictional film ‘The Purge’ by some. 

The anti-Trump Republican pro-democracy organization, The Lincoln Project, noted on X that the former president was “describing the premise of The Purge,” and the group wasn't the only one to make the connection. 

MSNBC special news correspondent Molly Jong-Fast also noted Trump’s suggest was similar to ‘The Purge’ in an X post that linked a video of the former president's remarks in Pennsylvania.

Politico noted in its reporting that Trump has had a long history of endorsing police violence, previously saying the video of George Floyd's murder in 2020 was “a beautiful thing to watch.” Politico also quoted a 2017 speech that saw Trump endorse police violence. 

“When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in, rough. I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice,’” Trump said in 2017. The Vice President’s campaign posted a clip of Trump’s comments in Pennsylvania but did not comment on his idea according to Politico.

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