President Donald Trump has repeated a campaign promise to bring back “insane asylums.”
“You can’t have these people walking around,” Trump told the Daily Caller in excerpts of an interview that will be released in full later Monday.
“So dangerous, so dangerous. And they can live to be 85 years old,” he said.
Trump pinned the blame on Democrat-run cities and states for running out of money to prop up the institutions that ultimately had protected Americans from the mentally ill.
“They used to have them, and what happened is states like New York and California that had them, New York had a lot of them: They released them all into society because they couldn’t afford it,” Trump continued. “You know, it’s massively expensive.”
But the president sees them as a worthy expense for public safety and security.
“They were all over New York, I remember when I was growing up, Creedmoor,” Trump said. “They had a place, Creedmoor, they had a lot of them, Bellevue, and they were closed by a certain governor. And I remember when they did, it was a long time ago, and I said, ‘They didn’t release these people?’
“And they did. They released them into society, and that’s what you have. It’s a rough, it’s a rough situation.”
Trump had echoed a similar refrain on Latin American countries “not sending their best” as illegal migrants to the U.S.
Trump is now directing a street sweeping of homeless, criminals, and illegals in Washington, D.C., and hopes to expand it to Republican-led states with governors amenable to federal reinforcements and even Democrat-run sanctuary cities and states that might not be.
“I call it a crime-free zone because we don’t play games,” Trump added of his D.C. takeover.
“You know, I said, ‘They spit, we hit.’
“You know, when these people — women — they’re standing up to these guys, good-looking guys, and they want to do something, but they’re not allowed to.”
Trump also repeated his call to empower law enforcement to do their job against the lawless on the streets.
“If they do, they’ll be arrested; they’ll arrest the soldiers,” Trump lamented. “They had an arrest warrant out on every single soldier, if they hit back, there was an automatic arrest.
“So you have these people, they scream, they’re this far away, screaming,” Trump said, noting how close they were.
“Some women, screaming, like crazy, they’re crazy,” he said. “And then they start spitting in the face of the guy. And these guys are just, they wouldn’t, but they can’t do it.”
Law enforcement is not empowered against it, Trump concluded.
“Now they can do it,” he concluded. “So I said, ‘They spit, we hit.'”
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