‘One Really Violent Day’; Trump Appears To Propose ‘The Purge’ As Policy To Reduce Crime

Donald Trump might be more unhinged than ever.


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The Purge is a movie franchise that has existed since 2013. It is centered on a scenario in which crime is made legal for 12 hours once a year. Five movies and a TV series have been made, with a sixth film currently in the works. One of them, The Purge: Election Year, arrived in the summer of 2016, shortly before Donald Trump’s election.

No government has ever enacted or proposed a real-life version of The Purge. But over the weekend, Trump appeared to suggest something like that.

Speaking at a Saturday rally in Erie, Pa., the former president and Republican nominee got into one of his usual bouts of free association. And it ended up suggesting something resembling The Purge.

Trump began talking about some jurisdictions that have stopped treating shoplifting below a certain amount as a felony and stated, “You saw kids walk in with calculators,” supposedly to determine that what they were stealing was below that threshold.

Then, Trump declared that “if you had one violent day,” one presided over by Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA), in whose district the rally was held, “One rough hour. And I mean real rough. The word will get out, and it will end immediately.”

Granted, Trump was not suggesting legalizing crime, but rather, it appears, a one-hour period in which police would be “rough” about shoplifters, it would cut down on retail crime. t

It’s not clear if there’s any truth to the story about shoplifters with calculators, as no news reports have substantiated that, although one group of teens in New York, in 2023, were reported to have stolen more than $40,000 worth of calculators in a series of heists.

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Trump has in the past called for police to be rougher with suspects, including his use of the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” — one he borrowed from a notoriously racist Southern sheriff in the 1960s — during the unrest following the killing of George Floyd in 2020.

Quite a few people noticed the resemblance of Trump’s proposal to The Purge:

It’s unclear if Trump is familiar at all with the Purge franchise.

Image courtesy of the Political Tribune photo library. 



Stephen Silver
Stephen Silver is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, and contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Stephen has authored thousands of articles that focus on politics, technology, and the economy.

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