Politics
Trump’s tough talk on crime is taking a major hit. Here’s why.
Former President Donald Trump and much of the GOP have staked their 2024 electoral hopes on convincing voters that Democrats are willfully allowing violent criminals to roam the streets.
In doing that, they’ve frequently deployed the racist “Willie Horton strategy” — in essence, cherry-picking stories of gruesome crimes, particularly crimes committed by immigrants — to suggest Dems don’t care about keeping Americans safe.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump stoked violence against fellow Americans, and he’s promised to free the people involved if elected.
Getting voters to believe this, coming from Trump of all people, was always going to require that they ignore the irony. On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump stoked violence against fellow Americansand he’s promised to free the people involved if elected. He’s not a credible voice when it comes to crime.
On Tuesday’s episode of The ReidOut, Joy spoke with Judd Legum, the reporter who broke a story on Jaime Davidsona convicted cop-killer and drug dealer whose sentence Trump commuted on the last day of his term. Davidson, who was convicted of murder for coordinating the fatal, armed robbery of a New York undercover officer in 1990, was released by Trump, but convicted of domestic abuse earlier this year and handed a three-month sentence in July. (He’s appealing the conviction.)
Legum’s report explains the peculiar circumstances surrounding Davidson’s release:
Trump’s commutation of Davidson’s life sentence was controversial at the time because of the severity of Davidson’s offense and the atypical process that led to his release. Requests for pardons and commutations usually are handled through the Office of the Pardon Attorney. Davidson had sought the commutation of his life sentence through official channels in 2013 and 2017 and was denied both times. In the waning days of Trump’s presidency, Davidson eschewed the Office of the Pardon Attorney and sought relief directly from Trump. Davidson’s attorney Betty Schein, had deep connections to the Trump White House. Schein and her husband, Alan Futerfas, represented people associated with the Trump Organization, including Donald Trump Jr.
Davidson’s release also got support from Alice Johnson, a formerly incarcerated woman whose sentence Trump commuted after Kim Kardashian drew the Trump White House’s attention to her case.
Another person granted clemency under Trump now stands accused of a violent crime.
Jonathan Braun, a convicted drug kingpin and violent loan shark, was also released via last-minute commutation by Trump in 2021. Braun was arrested last month and is facing charges in New York over claims he assaulted his wife and father-in-law on various occasions in July and August. He pleaded not guilty and his attorney told CNBC he’d address the claims in court.
As The New York Times reported, the circumstances around Trump’s commutation of Braun were “troubling.” The move came after Braun’s family made inroads with the Trump family through their connections to Charles Kushner, the father of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared. And the commutation reportedly disrupted a major federal probe into predatory lending that Braun was expected to assist. According to the Times’ reporting, the younger Kushner played a “major role in the less structured vetting process” that led to Braun’s commutation.
The commutation announcement for Braun ironically mentions his plans to support the wife he’s now accused of assaulting.
Trump’s administration circumvented the normal processes to release people that are known to be violent, only for them to commit violent crimes — allegedly, in Braun’s case — yet again. This provides a window into how Trump could abuse the commutation process in the future. But unlike when such claims are lobbed at liberals, I don’t expect these stories to get wall-to-wall coverage in conservative media.
In fact, Trump’s campaign gave a rather milquetoast statement in response to Legum’s reporting, “President Trump believes anyone convicted of a crime should spend time behind bars.”
For a variety of reasons, it’s an wholly unbelievable claim.
Ja’han Jones is The ReidOut Blog writer. He’s a futurist and multimedia producer focused on culture and politics. His previous projects include “Black Hair Defined” and the “Black Obituary Project.”
The U.S. delegation in Seattle includes HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, according to a FIFA official, along with White House FIFA World Cup Task Force czar Andrew Giuliani. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy were among those who attended the U.S.’ first match, against Paraguay.
Britain wouldn’t have its latest likely next prime minister if not for soccer.
Andy Burnham, the former Greater Manchester mayor elected to the U.K. Parliament in a closely-watched by-election on Thursday, is expected to oust Prime Minister Keir Starmer as Labour Party leader in a matter of weeks. The sport propelled his political rise.
The pivotal moment of Burnham’s long political career came in 2009, when he was the Cabinet minister for culture, media and sport under then-PM Gordon Brown. Burnham was asked to return to his native Liverpool for a memorial commemorating the Hillsborough Disaster.
The 1989 event remains Britain’s worst-ever sporting catastrophe. Almost 100 Liverpool fans were crushed to death at a cup game in South Yorkshire, following a series of disastrous crowd control errors by police chiefs and stadium staff.
The horror of the day was compounded in the immediate aftermath, when police sought to cover up their mistakes by falsely blaming drunken Liverpool fans for the crush. The lies were amplified by a willing national media and allowed to linger for years; the city grieved and demanded justice. Bereaved families campaigned for years. But no one listened, and no one was held accountable.
Born in Liverpool and steeped in soccer culture, Burnham knew all this as he headed to the memorial at Liverpool’s Anfield stadium 20 years later. He was well aware how a young government envoy would be greeted by the crowd, still raging at the injustice two decades on. But to his credit, he went anyway — and was met with a wall of heckles, chants and protest songs from the part of Anfield, known as the Kop, where the team’s loudest supporters congregate. (The video of his halting, shattered-looking appearance is well worth watching.)
Burnham — until then a typical career politician in Westminster — has described the day as a seminal moment. He returned to Cabinet and demanded a new inquiry into Hillsborough. Three years later its report revealed every claim made by the justice campaigners — of police failures and a scandalous cover-up — had been true. The government was forced to apologize.
Burnham was widely praised for his role in exposing the truth about Hillsborough. But more significant in his ultimate rise to power would be the shift in his own psyche. “I always say that I took my first steps out of Westminster on 15 April 2009 when I walked out to face the Kop,” he wrote in his memoir, “Head North,” penned with close friend (and Hillsborough survivor) Steve Rotheram. “Things were never the same after that day.”
Burnham says his experiences dealing with the Hillsborough justice campaign shaped his view of the Westminster political machine, as an arrogant and failing institution which ignores English regions outside of London. Eight years later he would quit Westminster altogether to become a mayor in his native northwest.
Fast-forward to 2026, and Burnham finds himself in an enviable position — an experienced politician able to cast himself as a political outsider ready to take on the Westminster elites. (While Starmer supports the North London-based champions Arsenal, Burnham is a season ticket holder at his beloved Everton F.C., and is regularly photographed jogging in a vintage Everton jersey.) It’s a familiar narrative which chimes with disgruntled voters everywhere.
Read Jack’s Blue Light News Magazine profile of Andy Burnham here and Blue Light News’s full coverage of the Makerfield by-election and its unfolding fallout here.
Who’s not here at Seattle’s Lumen Field for the Pacific Rim face-off between the United States and Australia?
If they’re following the match, the two countries’ elected heads — President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese — are doing so from afar.
- Kennedy and Wright cheer on US
- The politician who kicked his way to power
- The US-Australia face-off that isn’t happening
- The soccer boss in Mark Carney’s ear
- Vance says US allows more than dozen ships through to Iranian ports
- Regulators back Trump plan to speed power to energy-hungry AI data centers
- The accidental American
- The Americans who want to see Australia do well
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- Australian media are launching a MAGA counterpress
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