On Monday, Fox News aired a disastrous interview with Donald Trump. It wasn’t bad for the news network; it was bad for Trump. Bill Baier really grilled the former president, getting him to talk about the classified documents charge that may put him in the slammer. He proceeded to basically confess, which even far right commentators thought was idiotic. But there was more! Part two aired Tuesday, and if it didn’t contain a bombshell quite like Trump self-immolating himself on TV, it at least featured what’s surely a top shelf Trump gaffe.
Trump brags to Bret Baier about granting Alice Johnson clemency.
Baier informs him that she would be killed under his policy proposal of executing drug dealers.
Trump is caught off guard: “No, no. No. Under my pl–. Under that? UHHHHHHHHHHH…” pic.twitter.com/WxSWOIQVi5
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) June 20, 2023
As per Mediaite, Baier asked Trump about his strange plan to award the death penalty to any and all drug dealers. The big guy still thought it was a good idea. “That’s the only way you’re gonna stop it,” he said, arguing that “a drug dealer will kill approximately 500 people during the course of his or her life.”
Baier then pointed out that Trump is a “big proponent of the First Step Act, the criminal justice reform,” which he signed into law in 2018 and which helps some formerly incarcerated people to reenter society. Baier pointed out that about 12% committed crimes after being released.
“But I focused on non-violent crime,” Trump replied. He then brought up Alice Johnson, a woman imprisoned for trafficking cocaine. Trump pardoned at the end of his single term in office, and he bragged about it to Baier.
But Baier, having just gotten Trump to say he still supports executing drug dealers, pointed out, “But she’d be killed under your plan.”
A genuinely confused Trump replied, “Huh?”
After Baier reminded Trump that Johnson was a drug dealer, he backpedaled, saying, “No, no. No. Under my, oh, under that? Uhh, it would depend on the severity.”
Baier told him, “She’s technically a former drug dealer. She had multi-million dollar cocaine ring.”
Trump waffled a bit, then reiterated that his drug dealer plan includes “any drug dealer.”
“So even Alice Johnson?” Baier asked Trump, which prompted a confusing reply from Trump: “She can’t do it, ok? By the way, if that was there, she wouldn’t be killed, it would start as of now.”
He then tried to argue that had she thought about dealing drugs with Trump’s law in place, she would have second thoughts.
“But she wouldn’t have done it if it was death penalty,” Trump argued. “In other words, if it was death penalty, she wouldn’t have been on that phone call. She wouldn’t have been a dealer.”
Trump then ignored that Johnson’s history with a large drug operation.
“Now she wasn’t much of a dealer ’cause she was sort of like, I mean, honestly, she got treated terribly,” he said. “She was treated, she was treated sort of like I get treated. But Bret, she was treated very unfairly. She got 48 years and that was bad.”
In other words, Trump is proud of pardoning Johnson, who would be executed under his drug dealer plan, but who wouldn’t have dealt drugs if his plan was already in place, which it wasn’t. Makes sense.
(Via Mediaite)