Trump Waxes Poetic About Alcatraz as Roger Goodell Looks On: ‘Horrible, and Beautiful, and Strong, and Miserable, Weak’

President Donald Trump waxed poetic about Alcatraz at a press conference on Monday during which he announced that the 2027 National Football League Draft would be held in Washington, D.C..

Asked about his intention to reopen Alcatraz, the former federal prison on an island off the coast of San Francisco, Trump launched into an answer that touched on law and order, shark bites, and the symbolic nature of the “horrible, and beautiful, and strong, and miserable” old penitentiary as NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser looked on somewhat uncomfortably.

“Well, I guess I was supposed to be a moviemaker. We’re talking-, we started with the moviemaking and we’ll end. I mean it represents something very strong, very powerful, in terms of law and order. Our country needs law and order. Alcatraz is, I would say the ultimate, right? Alacatraz, Sing Sing, and Alcatraz, the movies. But it’s right now a museum, believe it or not. A lot of people go there,” answered Trump before continuing:

It housed the most violent criminals in the world, and nobody ever escaped. One person almost got there, but they, as you know, the story, they found his clothing rather badly ripped up, and it was a lot of shark bites, a lot problems. Nobody’s ever escaped from Alcatraz and it just represented something strong having to do with law and order. We need law and order in this country.

And so we’re going to look at it. Some of the people up here are going to be working very hard on that. And we had a little conversation, I think it’s going to very interesting. We’ll see if we can bring it back in large form and a lot. But I think it represents something. Right now it’s a big hulk that’s sitting there rusting and rotting. Very-, you look at it, it’s sort of, you saw that picture that was put out, it was sort of amazing. But it sort of represents something that’s both horrible, and beautiful, and strong, and miserable, weak. It’s got a lot of qualities that are interesting, and I think they make a point.

Trump announced his intention to reopen Alcatraz in a Sunday evening Truth Social post in which he said he was “directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders.”

Watch above via Fox News.