Former President Donald Trump reportedly wanted to kill drug dealers and gang members in mass executions that would be a spectacle aimed at demonstrating his power.
Sources tell Rolling Stone that Trump would regularly make angry demands about using either firing squads or gallows to mass-execute gang members in a way that would see "bodies pile up in the streets."
“F---ing kill them all,” Trump would say, according to Rolling Stone's sources. “An eye for an eye.”
The former president also referenced the way authoritarian regimes dealt with drug dealers by saying, "Other countries do it all the time."
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“He had a particular affinity for the firing squad,” one former Trump administration official told the publication.
The report goes on to detail exactly why Trump was not successful in his endeavors.
"That mass executions were not a feature of Trump’s term is a credit to the American justice system and the more sober-minded government officials who were unwilling to be complicit in his mad schemes," reports Rolling Stone. "These aides and advisers typically put the president off, making vague promises to 'look into' the idea, long enough to let Trump’s tyrannical tantrum blow over."
However, the publication warns that guardrail is far less likely to hold in a second term.
"A second administration will not feature advisers in the mold of former Chief of Staff John Kelly, or Defense Secretary Mark Esper — establishment Republicans with a stake in keeping Trump constitutionally in bounds," the report notes.