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As former president Donald Trump held rallies across the country in advance of the midterm elections, a central part of his speech was a dramatic proposal to begin executing drug dealers quickly, with little recourse for defendants to due process rules that might prevent swift prosecution and sentencing. Trump presents his idea with a blizzard of statistics and figures — and a gruesome anecdote — to justify what would be an extraordinary and legally shaky change in criminal justice policy.
As is often the case with Trump, the claims he makes as part of this riff are easily debunked or cannot be verified. And, as he often does, Trump speaks in admiring terms about an authoritarian regime as he offers China as a role model — although with an inaccurate depiction of its practices and history.
Yet Trump’s plan to execute drug dealers is one of the few substantive policy proposals he makes in speeches that delve deeply into grievances about his defeat…
This article was written by Glenn Kessler and originally published on www.washingtonpost.com