Trump Vows Return of Death Penalty to Washington, DC — Where It Has Been Abolished for 44 Years

President Trump on Tuesday said the next step in his crime crackdown will be pursuing the death penalty against murderers in Washington, D.C. — a place where capital punishment has been abolished since 1981.

“Anybody murders something in the capital, capital punishment,” the president said during a televised cabinet meeting. “Capital, capital punishment.”

Trump continued: “If somebody kills somebody in the capital, Washington, D.C., we’re going to be seeking the death penalty. And that’s a very strong preventative, and everybody that’s heard it agrees with it. I don’t know if we’re ready for it, in this country, but we have it. We have no choice.”

The last person executed in D.C. was in 1957, when the nation’s capital was governed by U.S. Congress. Several steps were taken in the decades after to abolish capital punishment in D.C., before being finalized in ’81.

Trump on Tuesday said “states are going to have to make their own decision” when it comes to the death penalty. But in D.C., where his administration recently deployed the National Guard to combat crime, Trump said, “It’s the death penalty, okay.”

On Tuesday, the first murder in Washington, D.C. in 13 days was reported. Vice President JD Vance, a day earlier, said the capital typically averaged one murder every other day, before commending the president on saving 6-7 lives since deploying the National Guard.

President Trump has said he is considering a similar strategy in other major cities like Chicago — a plan that Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said he was not a fan of. 

Watch above via C-SPAN.