President Donald Trump made an alarming, albeit incredibly far-fetched, assertion on Friday that would represent a complete overhaul of the U.S. justice system where a violent crime is caught on tape.
The president said that the justice system should work very quickly — more like the authoritarian system used in China — when authorities apprehend a suspect who closely resembles the individual seen committing a crime on film.
“One thing I say is we have to have quick trials. I call it quick trials. Because in China, they do have quick trials, you know?” Trump said on “Fox & Friends.”
“They don’t wait six years, and claim all sorts of reasons —”
Co-host Brian Kilmeade then tried to interject with criticism of the U.S. adversary, saying, “You start off guilty and you end up guilty in China.”
Trump continued without addressing Kilmeade’s point.
“What happens here,” he went on, “is you go through seven, eight years. And by the time it ends, and then they say, ‘Well, he had a reason to do it because he wasn’t treated right in grade school, and it’s his teacher’s fault, and it’s the government’s fault.’ They should have a trial the following day, as far as I’m concerned.”
It is worth noting that the president is exaggerating, although complex trials may take months from start to finish, and potentially several years to exhaust the appeals process.
The comments came after Trump announced that authorities had captured the man suspected of killing right-wing activist Charlie Kirk in Utah, later named by authorities as 22-year-old Tyler Robinson. Trump went on to talk about violence more generally across the country, boasting about his efforts to militarize Washington, D.C., even though statistics show crime had already been on a downturn there for months.
It was after touching on an incident in North Carolina that he floated his suggestion to emulate China.
That incident, from late August, was amplified this week with the release of security camera video that showed Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska stabbed to death aboard a train in a seemingly random and unprompted attack. Trump and his allies — including, until Wednesday, Kirk — have been using the young woman’s death to argue for heavier police presence in cities and harsher penalties.
“When you have somebody on tape. Here’s a guy on tape getting ready to — and then he did his thing — the whole thing is on tape,” Trump said of the train car incident.
A 34-year-old man named Decarlos Brown has been charged in Zarutska’s death.
“This trial, it will start in two, three, four years. We have to have, in certain places that do it differently, they have what is called quick trial. They have a fast trial, a fast verdict.”
Trump then voiced his support for the death penalty for the accused killers in both the Kirk and Zarutska murders.
It is not the first time Trump has suggested he wants to redesign parts of the justice system to hold swift trials and executions. In years past, he repeatedly floated the idea that drug dealers should face summary execution in the U.S., falsely claiming that is how things work in China and the result is an absence of drug abuse.
Republican lawmakers asked to comment on Trump’s idea back in 2022 appeared skeptical.
Trump is also famous for denigrating the U.S. justice system when it goes against his own interests.
The Constitution guarantees the right to a speedy trial but also protects the rights of those accused of crimes in the name of justice, which is not served if the wrong individual is punished for a crime.
