Trump's Dream Of Executing Drug Dealers Still Not Catching On

No one else wants this!

One thing you can say about Donald Trump is that he really does have a gift for getting people het up over things they never thought to be upset about before or that they hadn't really considered being mad about for years. And yet, while he has been going on and on for years about how much he wants to execute drug dealers, he has truly failed to make fetch happen in this instance.

This weekend, during his rally in Michigan, he brought it up again, lying to the crowd and telling telling them, "If you have a meaningful death penalty, crime in our country will go down 80 to 85 percent in one day." They cheered at the statistic he had so obviously pulled directly from his ass, but did not do so with nearly the amount of gusto they had for the transphobic nonsense he got to later in the speech.

“"If you have a meaningful death penalty, crime in our country will go down 80 to 85 percent in one day ... I really believe that has to be a part of our platform" -- Trump on drug dealers”

— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1664667227 

Trump also praised Chinese President Xi Jinping's method of dealing with drug dealers and other criminals — which is largely "find everyone guilty and then kill them." He spoke with wonder at the country's 100 percent conviction rate for drug dealers (to be fair, it is a 99.9 percent conviction rate — approximately 0.08 percent of defendants are found not guilty) and their extremely horrifying justice system in which innocent people are regularly convicted and executed. Not to mention frequently sent to work camps with no actual trial.

They're not exactly great with the human rights over there.

 Amnesty International's 2021 report on human rights abuses in China found that:

The human rights situation across China continued to deteriorate. Human rights lawyers and activists reported harassment and intimidation; unfair trials; arbitrary, incommunicado and lengthy detention; and torture and other ill-treatment for simply exercising their right to freedom of expression and other human rights. The government continued a campaign of political indoctrination, arbitrary mass detention, torture and forced cultural assimilation against Muslims living in Xinjiang. Thousands of Uyghur children were separated from their parents. The National Security Law for Hong Kong enabled human rights violations which were unprecedented since the establishment of the Special Administrative Region. There was limited progress in recognizing the rights of LGBTI people in Hong Kong.

It is not easy to find a lot of support for China's criminal justice policies in the United States, or anywhere else for that matter (other than China) — even on the Right.

Searching through several major rightwing sites, there was very little editorial support either for the death penalty for drug dealers or for modeling our justice system after China's or that of the Philippines. Even on Breitbart, on the rare occasions when it has been mentioned, it has only been mentioned in reference to Trump wanting this to happen. There were even a few throwaway lines that seemed to suggest something of an opposition to the idea.

"Trump’s support for executing drug dealers,citing the success of the policy in more authoritarian regimes, created a huge splash," read one article on the subject. 

"Experts say that the apparent link between low drug use and capital punishment in places like Singapore can be misleading," read another, adding, "Iran, they point out, also has the death penalty for drug use but still has one of the highest rates of opiate addiction in the world."

I couldn't find a single thing about it on The Federalist — which, curiously enough, actually has a few anti-death penalty essays here and there.

When the idea was brought up several years ago on the AskTrumpSupporters subreddit, only two people responded that they thought this was a good idea.

It's also incredibly unpopular nationwide. In a Quinnipiac poll conducted in 2018, only 21 percent of those polled said they were in favor of the death penalty for drug dealers. There is very little support, even on Twitter, even in the days following his speech. I have been able to find literally zero support anywhere for following China's lead on criminal justice matters.

Support for mass incarceration, particularly for drug crimes, has decreased exponentially over the years. Ninety-one percent of Americans support criminal justice reform.

The fact is, we know the death penalty is not a deterrent. Paradoxically, studies have actually shown that the murder rate tends to go down when it is abolished. A clear majority of Americans want those convicted of drug crimes to be treated rather than punished and an overwhelming majority think the war on drugs was a massive failure.

As per a 2021 ACLU poll:  

• 65 percent of voters support ending the “war on drugs”;

• 66 percent of voters support “eliminating criminal penalties for drug possession and reinvesting drug enforcement resources into treatment and addiction services”;

• Nearly two-thirds of the country believe we need a new approach based in public health, not law enforcement. Sixty-three percent say drug use should be addressed as a public health issue while only 33 percent say it should be addressed as a criminal justice issue;

• 83 percent say the “war on drugs” has failed. This exceeds 80 percent among Democrats (83 percent), Independents (85 percent), and Republicans (82 percent);

• 64 percent of Americans support repealing mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes; and

• 61 percent of voters support commuting, or reducing, the sentences of people incarcerated for drugs.

This may be the only horrifically authoritarian idea Trump has come up with that has received practically no support from his base, or anyone else for that matter (except Jeff Sessions) . I don't know why that is, but it is. It's not a particularly flashy issue, but given this, his support for the death penalty for drug dealers and cringe admiration for the Chinese justice system might be one of the better issues to attack him (and other Republicans) on when he runs again in 2024.

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