‘I’m Sorry, But Your Son Is Dead’: Trump Imagines Calling Parents of Murdered D.C. Tourist
President Donald Trump riffed on a hypothetical phone call in which the parent of a tourist in Washington, D.C. is informed that their son has been murdered.
On Monday, the president took questions from reporters in the Oval Office, where he defended his deployment of National Guard members to Democratic-run cities in the U.S. Trump has insisted that places such as Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, Washington, D.C., and other metropolises are so crime-ridden, that military intervention is warranted, even though crime was down broadly last year. Last week, he told an assembled group of military brass that U.S. cities should be used as “training grounds” for their soldiers.
“So, you have Black women with MAGA hats on in Chicago all over the place,” Trump claimed. “They want the Guard to come in. Or, they don’t care who comes in. They just wanna be safe. And they really don’t care. There was one woman, she was great today. She said. ‘You know what? I don’t care if it’s the National Guard, the Army, the Marines, the Air Force, I don’t care who comes in, as long as we’re safe. ‘And that’s the way most of the public feels.”
Trump then pivoted to D.C. and conjured a scenario in which a tourist is murdered and the deceased’s parents must be informed:
And it was so great we started with our nation’s capital. One of the worst, I mean, so many people, every week somebody was killed. They’d come from Iowa, they’d come from Indiana, they wanna see the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial. They wanna see something and then get shot.
And you’d call their parents. “I’m sorry, but your son is dead.”
And they go, “What do you mean he’s dead? Came to Washington, D.C.”
Not anymore. That’s not happening anymore. We have a safe place. We have a safe capital. It’s as safe as we have probably almost just about in the country. And if you look back six months ago, seven months ago, this was a deathtrap.
The president sometimes imagines violent or otherwise grim happenings while speaking in public. Last year, he posited a scenario in which Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) dies in a fiery car wreck.
“If something goes wrong, and Marjorie Taylor Greene with that beautiful blonde hair is driving down the highway in a hydrogen car, and the problem with the hydrogen car, if something goes wrong, it’s like the atom bomb went off,” Trump said at the time. “You’re not recognizable.”
Earlier this year as wildfires raged in Southern California, Trump predicted that “they’re going to find many bodies, you know. Only the dogs will find them, right? You know, German Shepherds will.”
Watch above via C-SPAN.
