Donald Trump says he will end the Justice Department’s moratorium on executions on his first day in office and use the full force of the law to pursue top drug dealers and cop killers.
The Trump campaign sees crime in general and Kamala Harris’ record as a prosecutor in California in particular as areas where they can inflict damage on his presidential bid.
And in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Trump outlined more details of his crime-fighting agenda, starting with whether he would reverse the freeze on federal executions imposed by the Biden-Harris administration.
“Of course I would. I would execute the major drug traffickers,” he said when asked if that would be a priority from day one.
‘Maybe I would like the rape of a girl, the murder of a policeman.
Donald Trump spoke to DailyMail.com at his Mar-a-Lago home on Wednesday. He talked about his campaign, his politics and how he came to terms with life after being shot by a would-be assassin.
“I would execute those who violently kill other people.”
The Trump administration reinstated the use of the federal death penalty in 2019. And 13 federal death row inmates were executed, before Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a moratorium in July 2021.
Some 27 states have the death penalty on their books, although seven have also suspended executions.
Trump has raised the issue of tougher penalties for a range of crimes during the election campaign to present himself as the law-and-order candidate.
Last week he was at the Mexican border, where he highlighted the damage caused by cartels and smugglers, and met with grieving mothers.
“There are people who come to this country. Last week I left several of them, as you saw, at the border, where their daughters and sons were killed,” he said.
‘Their children were murdered by thugs and immigrants coming into our country, and they were brutally… brutally and violently murdered and thrown into garbage cans.’
Trump said “of course I would” when asked if he would end the Biden-Harris administration’s moratorium on federal executions. The last executions occurred in 2021, when he was in power.
Trump was at the Arizona border with Mexico last week, where he met with grieving mothers of children killed by illegal immigrants as he outlined his anti-crime and anti-security plans.
Drug traffickers responsible for hundreds of deaths should also face the maximum penalty, he said.
“A drug dealer kills an average of 500 people in his lifetime. I have no problem with that. If we want to stop the drug epidemic, we need to apply the death penalty,” he added.
Trump has used rallies and speeches to attack his election opponent, who rose from the San Francisco district attorney’s office to become California attorney general, calling him soft on crime.
Last week, at the Michigan sheriff’s office, he called her a “defunder” of the police and a “Marxist pro-crime prosecutor.”
“We’re here today to talk about how we’re going to stop the crime wave in Kamala, which is reaching levels never seen before,” he said Tuesday.
“She is, as you know, the most radical left-wing person ever considered for high office.”
Trump has attacked Kamala for being soft on crime and wanting to defund the police. In return, his campaign has pointed out that he has been convicted on 34 felony charges.
For its part, Harris’ campaign has downplayed his attacks, casting the race as a former prosecutor versus a “34-time convicted felon,” a reference to Trump’s hush-money case in New York in which Trump was found guilty on all counts.
And she accused him of lying “about crime, which skyrocketed on his watch, about the police, whom he attempted to defund, and about the January 6th insurrectionists who attacked police officers defending our Capitol at his behest.”
“Donald Trump can’t bring us together, so he’s trying to tear us apart. The American people will reject his failed leadership and divisive agenda in November.”
Harris has enjoyed a surge in her poll numbers and fundraising since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee.
But Trump said he had secured a number of key endorsements and felt his campaign had gone from strength to strength.
During the interview, held in Mar-a-Lago’s gilded living room (the club’s most luxurious reception room), Harris also criticized people for waiting so long to give an interview and expressed her displeasure with Florida’s strict abortion laws.
This is a tricky issue for Trump as he tries to keep his evangelical supporters on his side without alienating female voters.
He has tried to please all sides by saying abortion is a matter for states to decide, but he will do so. Florida, where he lives, is holding a referendum on expanding abortion access beyond the newly enacted six-week limit. He said he had already made up his mind on the issue.
“Well, I know, but I want more than six weeks,” she said. “I want more than six weeks.”
“I think six weeks is a mistake. And I will express this soon, but I want more than six weeks.
“And in Florida, we have a six-week program, and that’s what I think they’re voting for, and I think it should be longer than six weeks.”