Donald Trump was mocked online after proposing a solution to crime that has been compared to the horror film The Purge.
Speaking at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania yesterday, the US Republican presidential candidate said criminals ‘have to be taught’ a lesson.
To do this, he suggested: ‘If you had one really violent day. One rough hour — and I mean real rough — the word would get out and it would end immediately.’
He said there there was high crime in the US due to police not being ‘allowed to do their job’ because Kamala Harris and ‘the liberal left won’t let them.’
Several people online said Trump’s proposal bore a close resemblance to The Purge, a dystopian horror film franchise.
In the first Purge film, released in 2013, the US has a 12-hour period each year during which all crime is legal..
Journalist Brian Krassenstein asked on X: ‘Did Trump just f***ing suggest The Purge?’
Another X user, Mark Rothchild, said: ‘The Purge. He’s endorsing The Purge.’
And Armand Domalewski wrote: ‘Trump is literally proposing The Purge lmao.’
Ahmed Baba, meanwhile, said: ‘So to be clear, Trump is calling for a one-way Purge-style day where police are allowed to unleash brutality on civilians. His campaign will try and spin this but that’s exactly what it sounds like.’
One X poster, Noah Berlatsky, said he thought it sounded more like ‘Kristallnacht’, when the Nazis attacked Jewish people and their homes in November 1938.
He said: ‘He’s not proposing the purge. He’s proposing Kristallnacht. This is one of those cases where I’m afraid that the fictional fascism has overwritten the actual fascism in unhelpful ways.
‘In The Purge, the police won’t respond to calls for help. Trump is proposing a state program in which police are empowered to murder marginalized people.’
Trump also made personal attacks on his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, calling her ‘mentally impaired’.
‘Crooked Joe Biden became mentally impaired,’ he said. ‘Sad. But lying Kamala Harris, honestly, I believe she was born that way.
‘There´s something wrong with Kamala. And I just don´t know what it is, but there is definitely something missing. And you know what, everybody knows it.’
He told a crowd Harris was responsible for a migrant ‘invasion’ at the U.S.-Mexico border and ‘she should be impeached and prosecuted for her actions’.
The week before, Trump’s campaign team was left red-faced after running ads targeted at swing state of Georgia – with an image of the flowery rolling hills of the country of Georgia.
The ad in which presumably a Team Trump member confused the two Georgia’s was live on Facebook and Instagram.
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