Donald Trump, the first former U.S. president ever convicted on 34 felony counts, faced a torrent of scorn and ridicule after he declared, “A criminal is a criminal, they generally stay a criminal,” during a rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota on Saturday.
Alternative headline: Trump finally tells the truth about something.
This is lacking context. He was paraphrasing something I believe is implied to have been said (or at least believed) by Bukele(the president of El Salvador)
Trump was talking about this country dumping all their criminals in the USA. He said:
"He liked to say he did something with a social experiment. A criminal is a criminal as they generally say a criminal and we don’t have time to figure it out, but we’re not going to take criminals and we’re going to get rid of the criminals that we've been given by all these countries from all over the world."
Now if you want to give him the benefit of the doubt and interpret that "criminal is a criminal" line as something he is quoting from someone else, you go right ahead. I do not give him the benefit of the doubt though. Even if he is quoting someone else, he is not disputing the point. He appears to be accepting it as fact and his response is that he's going to get rid of those criminals.
/Apologies for deleting and then un-deleting, I hit enter too soon while transcribing and wanted to avoid confusion.
Yeah that's fair, I'm not giving him the benefit of the doubt so much as just how I heard it(based on his voice, he wasn't talking normally- instead he sounded like he was quoting), but there's definitely two possible ways to interpret it.
Trump could literally go up there and say "oogity boogity, shoo shoo macgoo wiggity wam wam" and his supporters would cheer like crazy. They're brainwashed.
I sure hope she doesn't approve that message. I think with enough supports (food, housing, education, etc.), most people who commit crimes would stop. That, of course, is not enough for assholes like Trump. He's racking them up like he's going for the record.
In Norway, the recidivism rate, (percentage of people that end up back in prison for something else after being released) is around 20%. Here in the US its closer to 80%.
So there are definitely different ways to approach the problem.
So her position, I think, is pretty clear. I don't agree with the drug crime approach, but in general I approve of her approach as a DA/AG.
That said - I do thoroughly hope she takes that clip, notes that she has zero criminal convictions, and a (hopefully running) tally of Trump's convictions, and then signs off with "I am Kamala Harris and I approve this message".