In First Speech Back in D.C., Trump Confirms He’ll Rule Like a Dictator in Second Term

Donald Trump, a man who should not be allowed to step foot in the District of Columbia ever again, unfortunately returned on Tuesday, and he came bearing a message: Should he win a second term in 2024, not only will the walls off the White House look like a Jackson Pollock sponsored by Heinz, but he won’t have a single lingering doubt about going full totalitarian dictator.

In a speech delivered at the America First Policy Institute’s two-day summit, the former president kicked things off by explaining that the U.S. should model its strategy for drug dealers off of that of authoritarian countries like China, which execute such people. “If you look at countries throughout the world, the ones that don’t have a drug problem are those that institute a very quick trial—death penalty sentence for drug dealers,” Trump said in his speech. In his first term, Trump frequently spoke of his desire to sentence drug dealers to death. In April 2017, he called the then president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, to praise the guy for the country’s crackdown on drugs that reportedly resulted in the killing of more than 12,000 people. “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem,” Trump reportedly said, referring, glowingly, to Duterte’s extrajudicial murder spree. “Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.” A year later, Axios reported that he’d internally raised the prospect of executing drug dealers in the U.S. on numerous occasions.

After fantasizing about mass executions, Trump then moved onto his reported plans to fire thousands of federal employees—the ones who actually know what they’re doing—and replace them with MAGA loyalists: