And so, one question for reporters to ask the new Trump campaigner and potential Trump-administration official Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is something like this: The candidate you’re campaigning for, in whose administration you apparently intend to serve, wants our laws rewritten so that drug dealers, particularly those who sell narcotics, face capital punishment. Given that you sold cocaine in your youth, how do you feel about his advocacy of a regime that might have resulted in your own execution at age 19?

  • Optional@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    But the reason I decided finally to share this anecdote is because of a criminal-justice policy advocated by the presidential candidate he’s just endorsed. It’s another of those many spectacular contradictions I mentioned earlier.

    That is, Donald Trump, if he becomes president as Kennedy is now working to make happen, wants to start executing drug dealers. He said so in a speech as president in 2018: “These are terrible people, and we have to get tough on those people, because … if we don’t get tough on the drug dealers, we’re wasting our time … And that toughness includes the death penalty … We’re gonna solve this problem … We’re gonna solve it with toughness … That’s what they most fear."

    He said it again in 2022 when he announced his current candidacy: “We’re going to be asking [Congress to pass a law that] everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, [is] to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts.”