After repeatedly talking about author Thomas Harris' fictional cannibal serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter, it seems former Republican President Donald Trump has moved on to a new horror franchise.
During a Sunday MAGA rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, Trump suggested a solution to crime seemingly inspired by The Purge films. Ironically, the third film in the franchise is entitled The Purge: Election Year.
On Sunday, Trump told his MAGA faithful:
"Now, if you had one really violent day—like a guy like, [Pennsylvania Republican Representative] Mike Kelly, put him in charge, Congressman Kelly, put him in charge for one day—Mike would you say, you’re right here, he’s a great Congressman, would you say, Mike, that if you were in charge, you would say, 'Oh please don’t touch them, don’t touch them, let them rob your store'."
"All these stores go out of business, right? They don’t pay rent, the city doesn’t have—the whole—it’s a chain of events, it’s so bad."
"One rough hour, and I mean real rough—the word will get out and it will end immediately."
You can watch the moment here:
The Purge is an American horror franchise about a dystopian near future where White, Evangelical Christian nationalists have taken control of the government and created a "solution" to crime which is a thinly veiled purge targeting the poor and minorities.
The five films and 20-episode streaming series feature a seemingly normal, relatively crime-free America that observes an annual event known as "the Purge" when all crime, including murder, is legal for a 12-hour period. It purges both the undesirable elements of society—the poor, racial and religious minorities, and the unhoused—as well as satiating the wealthy citizens' urge for violence and other criminal acts.
People found Trump's solution terrifying and targeted.
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Many found Trump's proposal reminiscent of the fictional horror franchise.
But others felt it more closely resembled Nazi Germany's November 1938 Kristallnacht.
Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation by the Hitler Youth and German civilians throughout Nazi Germany and the occupied territories of Austria and Sudetenland on November 9-10, 1938.
A pogrom is a "violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group."
Jewish homes, hospitals and schools were ransacked with 267 synagogues destroyed, over 7,000 Jewish businesses damaged or destroyed, and 30,000 Jewish men arrested and sent to concentration camps. Early reports had fatalities at 91, but historians put the figure in the hundreds or higher.
Nazi authorities looked on without intervening while two "very violent" days effectively got "the word out."
People recognized both fictional inspiration and historical precedent in Trump's proposed solution.
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In another bizarre twist, The Purge: Election Year came out in 2016, the same year Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton but was elected 45th President via the Electoral College.
That film's tagline—"Keep America Great"—was also the slogan Trump used for his 2020 presidential campaign.
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