Donald Trump thinks our justice system is as joke. As he called for there to be swift action against terror suspects after Tuesday’s attack in New York City, he called our country’s justice system a “laughingstock” for the way it punishes terrorists.
Trump—who put Jeff Sessions in place as the head of the entire U.S. justice system—made his comments at a Cabinet meeting Wednesday as Sessions sat directly across from him, according to CNN.
Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, 29, drove a rented pickup truck down a bike path in lower Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon, leaving eight people dead and multiple people with serious but non-life-threatening injuries. Saipov reportedly yelled “Allahu akbar” as he exited the vehicle, brandishing two fake pistols. The incident was quickly labeled a terrorist attack.
Trump said that he would consider sending Saipov to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for punishment.
“We also have to come up with punishment that’s far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now,” Trump said to reporters. “They’ll go through court for years. And at the end, they’ll be—who knows what happens.
“We need quick justice and we need strong justice—much quicker and much stronger than we have right now. Because what we have right now is a joke and it’s a laughingstock. And no wonder so much of this stuff takes place,” Trump added.
In trying to spin her boss’s words, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters that Trump said “the process has people calling us a joke and calling us a laughingstock”—but those aren’t the words that came out of his mouth, and that’s not what he said.
Sanders said that Trump was “voicing his frustration with the lengthy process that often comes with a case like this,” and “that’s simply the point he was making.”
Trump has said in the past that he believes “torture works,” and during his campaign, he pledged to “load up” the prison camp at Guantanamo.
The calls for quick action after the New York incident directly contradict the stance the White House took after the mass shooting in Las Vegas last month when asked about gun control.
“Again, we haven’t had the moment to have a deep dive on the policy part of that,” Sanders said the day after the Vegas shooting. “We’ve been focused on the fact that we had a severe tragedy in our country. And this is a day of mourning, a time of bringing our country together, and that’s been the focus of the administration this morning.”
Apparently it’s only OK to take swift action when it meets a certain political agenda.
Read more at CNN.