Donald Trump has appeared to trip up by his own proposals on invoking the death penalty for caught drug dealers, having pardoned someone for drug-dealing offenses while president.
In an interview with Fox News' Bret Baier on Monday, the former president and current Republican frontrunner for 2024 was left momentarily lost for words after being told Alice Johnson would be put to death under his policy. Johnson had her sentence commuted in 2018 and received a full pardon in 2020.
Despite previously calling for "everyone who sells drugs" to receive the death penalty, he then qualified that he thought use of the death penalty in drug-dealing cases "would depend on the severity" of the crimes.
Newsweek approached the Trump campaign via email for comment on Wednesday.
Trump's drug policy has been framed as his response to a growing overdose crisis that has gripped America in recent years, fuelled by waves of fentanyl—a synthetic opioid—and now xylazine—a veterinary tranquilizer.
According to National Institute on Drug Abuse data, there were nearly 107,000 overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2021—more than double the 52,400 recorded in 2015. In that period, synthetic opioids have skyrocketed as a leading cause.
The Republican primary candidate has linked this growing health crisis to troubles the federal government is experiencing policing the southern land border with Mexico. In the 2023 fiscal year so far, border enforcement has seized 164,000 pounds of drugs along the border.
"We will wage war upon the cartels," Trump said during a speech announcing his candidacy for president in November, adding that he would ask Congress to draft a law so that "everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts—because it's the only way."
It is not the first time that the former president has espoused such a policy, having done so before his commutation and pardoning of Johnson, who was convicted in 1996 of eight federal counts relating to her role in a cocaine ring in Memphis, Tennessee.
"If we don't get tough on drug dealers, we're wasting our time," he said while still in office in a March 2018 speech on the opioid crisis. "And that toughness includes the death penalty."
In the Fox News interview, after Trump said Johnson was "high quality" and had been treated poorly, Baier replied: "But she'd be killed under your plan."
"Huh?" Trump responded, before Baier added: "As a drug dealer."
"No, no, no, under my plan... Oh, under that?" Trump then continued. "Ah, it would depend on the severity."
Later in the discussion, the former president stressed that Johnson "wouldn't be killed" as his policy "would start as of now," rather than applying retrospectively.
On his campaign website, Trump vows to "take down the drug cartels" by asking Congress "to ensure that drug smugglers and traffickers can receive the death penalty." In 2018, he stated the punishment would be targeted at the "big pushers, the ones who are really killing people."
Johnson's clemency was lobbied for by Kim Kardashian, who met with the then-president in the Oval Office to discuss the issue on May 30, 2018.
A week later, Trump commuted the remainder of Johnson's life sentence after 21 years in jail, before issuing her with a full pardon in August 2020.
Source:
Newsweek, A. Phillips, June 21, 2023
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde
