In 2018, as President Donald Trump was separating children from their parents and mocking victims of sexual assault, The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer wrote, “The Cruelty is the Point.”
“We can hear the spectacle of cruel laughter throughout the Trump era,” he wrote.
But cruelty is no longer enough. As he seeks a return to power in 2024, Trump has already pivoted to brutality, and there is nothing subtle about it.
Trump has long cultivated cruelty as a political weapon. But he has not confined his cruelty to mere rhetoric.
For Trump, this is hardly a new theme. His enthusiasm for violence — including torture, extra-judicial murder and shooting both migrants and protesters — has been a consistent feature of his politics for years.
As Serwer noted, Trump has long cultivated cruelty as a political weapon. But he has not confined his cruelty to mere rhetoric. Indeed, the “pro-life” former president makes no secret of his passion for actual violence — including the maiming, wounding, flesh-tearing, shooting and killing of human beings.
And this appetite for brutality will soon become a litmus test for right-wing politicians, including any of his GOP challengers.
Speaking to supporters at Mar-a-Lago in November, Trump threatened that, as president, he would send the military into American cities, even if local officials objected, and repeatedly stressed his eagerness for executing drug dealers and human traffickers after quick, summary trials.
Trump set up his pronouncement with feigned reluctance. “I don’t like to say this,” he protested. But obviously he loves it, repeating his proposals to kill drug dealers several times during the announcement.
“I don’t even know if the American public is ready for it. A lot of my people say, ‘Please don’t say that, sir. That’s not nice.’”
But Trump is not about nice. So during his announcement he recounted a conversation he claimed that he had with President Xi Jinping of China, when the Chinese strongman explained why his country had no drug problem: drug dealer trials that took two hours and ended in execution.
“By the end of the day you’re executed,” he related to an enthusiastic audience.
Trump is himself so enthusiastic about the executions that he put his own gruesome (and probably ahistorical) twist on the story.
“I don’t know if anybody wants to know this or if it’s too graphic,” he said, “but the bullet is sent to their families. You know that, right? Sent to their families. It’s pretty tough stuff. No games. So they have no drug problem whatsoever.”
Trump is himself so enthusiastic about the executions that he put his own gruesome (and probably ahistorical) twist on the story.
Trump especially loves stories about bloody bullets.
Back in 2016, he explained his support for waterboarding and other forms of torture by telling a (bogus) story about how U.S. Gen. John J. Pershing executed dozens of alleged Muslim terrorists in the Philippines with bullets dipped in pigs’ blood. Once again, he pretended to tell the story only reluctantly.
“You know, I read a story — it’s a terrible story, but I’ll tell you,” Trump said. “Should I tell you? Or should I not?”
But he told the fake story frequently, and tweeted about it. “Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught,” Trump tweeted. “There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!”









