President-elect Donald Trump promised to pursue the death penalty against “violent rapists, murderers, and monsters” once he takes control of the White House.
Trump’s vow came hours after President Joe Biden‘s controversial decision to commute the sentences of 37 federal death row prisoners, which the president-elect’s team previously called a “slap in the face to the victims” as some of the prisoners committed horrific crimes against women and children.
“As soon as I am inaugurated, I will direct the Justice Department to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers, and monsters,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “We will be a Nation of Law and Order again!”
Among those whose sentences were commuted by Biden were Brandon Basham, 43, and Chadrick Fulks, 47, who kidnapped, raped, and murdered two women after escaping prison. Thomas Sanders, 57, murdered a mother in front of her 12-year-old daughter, kidnapped the child, then murdered her four days later.
“Make no mistake, I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said in a statement announcing his decision.
Biden did not spare the sentences of three federal death row prisoners: Dylann Roof, who murdered nine black parishioners in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; Robert Bowers, who murdered 11 Jewish congregants at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one brother behind the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people and injured hundreds more.
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The president vowed to abolish the death penalty during his 2020 campaign but will not achieve that goal as his term comes to an end.
In the final months of his first term, Trump took the opposite approach to the death penalty as Biden did, overseeing the executions of 13 death row inmates.