Speaking during an interview with the Daily Caller’s Reagan Reese in the Oval Office on Friday, August 29, President Donald Trump argued that it is time to consider “reopening insane asylums” because our society “can’t have these people walking around” with severe mental issues that often put the public at risk.
As background, many of America’s insane asylums, where people with mental issues that made them risks to themselves or society were housed either voluntarily or involuntarily at the behest of the state or their family, were closed in the second half of the 20th century as reformers like Ronald Reagan changed the law in response to alleged abuses at the asylums and the massive expense of them. Many on the political right see their closure as having led to the massive homelessness problem that plagues states like California.
So, speaking with Reese, the president said that it is time to reopen the asylums. When pressed for details by Reese, he said, as the Daily Caller reports, “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.”
Continuing, Trump noted that it was expensive to keep the asylums open, and so they were eventually closed, saying, “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.”
Adding to that, the president noted that those who had been in the closed facilities were released into society, saying, “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.”
During a different section of the same interveiw, President Trump called for the arrest of leading Obama officials involved with Russiagate. That came when Reese asked the president, “I want to ask you about Russiagate. Director Gabbard has declassified Russiagate documents. They’re explosive. She’s referred the case to the DOJ . . . Do you think there are going to be arrests? Who do you think is going to be arrested, and how quickly?”
Responding, the president said that they should face arrest, saying, “I don’t know if there’s going to be. There should be. What they did is a disgrace. They cheated, they lied, they did so many bad things, evil things that were so bad for the country, and because they did something to me that should have never been done, nobody thought they’d ever do that. Actually, when I left, nobody thought that would happen.”
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Continuing, he explained that those agents of the Deep State are the real criminals, saying, “They get – they just went crazy. They’re bad people. They’re sick people. They’re the ones that committed all the crimes. We didn’t commit crimes. They committed all the crimes, there should be, I can’t tell you whether or not because I really I don’t have to stay uninvolved. I’m allowed to stay involved, but I purposely don’t get involved. I can say that they should be arrested.”
JD Vance has said much the same thing, vowing that indictments are coming. Watch him here: