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Donald Trump has used yet another violent crime victim to boost his presidential campaign. Trump has faced backlash since Tuesday for invoking the name of Ruby Garcia, a woman allegedly killed by an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, and for lying about having spoken to her family.
This is par for the course for Trump, whose public foray into politics arguably began in 1989, when he pushed for the death penalty for five Black and Latino youths — who came to be known as the “Central Park Five” — after they were (wrongfully) accused of attacking a white woman in Central Park (the five men were later exonerated).
Trump’s political hopes have always relied on his ability to stoke partisan fear and anger over traumatic incidents of violent crime. Take his 2016 campaign, for example. After NBA Hall of Famer Dwyane Wade’s cousin Nykea Aldridge was shot dead in Chicago that year, Trump sounded almost giddy when he posted online about the potential for the news to aid his campaign.
“Dwayne [sic] Wade’s cousin was just shot and killed walking her baby in Chicago,” he tweeted, adding: “Just what I have been saying. African-Americans will VOTE TRUMP!”
That same year, Trump and his campaign deployed a similar strategy when they promoted the story of Jamiel Shaw Jr., a young, Black man who was killed — in 2008! — by a man who was undocumented. The Trump campaign used the story to push its anti-immigrant agenda and tapped Jamiel Shaw Sr. to appear in an ad and at multiple campaign events.
During the 2020 campaign, Trump used another gruesome story in an attempt to score cheap political points against then-candidate Joe Biden: Trump boasted about his administration’s execution of a man named Daniel Lewis Lee.
“Joe Biden should explain why he believes Daniel Lewis Lee, an evil monster convicted of torturing and murdering a family of three, including an 8-year-old girl, did not deserve the death penalty,” Trump’s campaign said in a press release. The release seemed almost to imply that Biden had personally been an advocate on Lee’s behalf. In reality, Biden never even mentioned Lee. Trump was just bragging about his body count and using Biden’s general opposition to the death penalty to imply Biden was soft on crime.
“With the Trump Administration slated to administer total justice to three more child murderers and rapists in the coming weeks, Biden should explain why they should be protected from paying the ultimate price for their evil, horrific crimes,” the press release said.
These are just a few examples of Trump’s promotion of violent crime stories as a campaign tactic. Republicans have already signaled their intent to double and triple down on this tactic in the months ahead. But Trump’s own bloodthirsty grandstanding over the years has prepped us for the campaign we’re seeing today. One that’s hyperreliant on crime stories — like the killings of Garcia and Georgia student Laken Riley — to conjure fear and politicized outrage that can be used to his benefit.