President Donald Trump has considered “reopening insane asylums” and argued that society “can’t have these people walking around” with severe mental illnesses, during a recent interview on his crime crackdown in Washington, DC.
The Daily Caller’s Reagan Reese interviewed him in the Oval Office on Friday, asking if he would “be open to the government reopening insane asylums for people with serious mental illness.”
“Yeah I would,” the president responded.
When Reese prompted further, Trump continued, “Well, they used to have them, and you never saw people like we had, you know, they used to have them. And what happened is states like New York and California that had them, New York had a lot of them. They released them all into society because they couldn’t afford it.”
“You know, it’s massively expensive. But we had, they were all over New York. I remember when I was growing up, Creedmoor. They had a place, Creedmoor, they had a lot of them, Bellevue, and they were closed by a certain governor,” Trump reflected. “And I remember when they did, it was a long time ago, and I said they didn’t release these people? And they did. They released them into society, and that’s what you have. It’s a rough, it’s a rough situation.”
He added, “Because, you can’t have these people walking around.”
Speaking to the success of his takeover of DC’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and deployment of the National Guard to stomp out crime in the district, he told Reese that it is now a “crime-free zone.”
“So it turned out, it was amazing, because we’re a crime free zone now. I mean, you see what’s going on? There’s no crime. People are walking to restaurants. They’re free. It’s almost like we just freed the whole Washington, DC,” Trump said, noting that it happened “faster” than he thought.
“I mean, I knew we’re going to do it, but it went faster than I thought… Now, in two weeks, it’s going to be even better. I’m calling it, it’s a crime free zone now,” he continued. “People are going to restaurants that haven’t gone out in four years. They didn’t even want to go in their car because they get the you know, they have..,you see, the carjacking is down 87 percent.”
Even the Democrat mayor of Washington, DC, Muriel Bowser, touted the dramatic reduction in carjackings and overall crime as a success caused by Trump’s actions.
“We greatly appreciate the surge of officers that enhance what MPD has been able to do in this city,” the mayor said at a press conference last week:
“We know that when carjackings go down, when use of guns goes down, when homicide or robbery go down, neighborhoods feel safer and are safer, so this surge has been important to us,” Bowser continued, before adding that she has been working directly with U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Trump’s White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
