Trump’s racist revenge executions

From left, Alfred Bourgeois, Cory Johnson, Dustin Higgs, Lisa Montgomery and Brandon Bernard. Graphic: Fighting Words

During his final days in the White House, Trump is executing more prisoners than any U.S. president has since the 1950s. Starting on Bastille Day (July 14) this year, 10 prisoners have been put to death by the U.S. government.

Five of those executed were Black and one was Indigenous. The mentally disabled Black man Alfred Bourgeois was executed on Dec. 11, despite the opposition of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Two more Black men — Cory Johnson and Dustin John Higgs — are awaiting execution.

Trump also wants to kill Lisa Montgomery, a white woman who suffered psychosis from childhood rapes. Montgomery would be the first woman executed by the U.S. government since Ethel Rosenberg was burned to death in the electric chair for allegedly typing spy reports.

Killing people by lethal injection doesn’t satisfy Trump. His Justice Department changed the rules to allow prisoners to be electrocuted or shot by a firing squad. Crucifixions are still a no-no.

The wave of executions is Trump’s revenge for losing the election by 7 million votes. The billionaire president blames Black, Indigenous and Latinx voters for his defeat.

While Rudy Giuliani and other Trump lawyers are trying to throw out Black votes, Trump wants to execute as many Black, Indigenous and Latinx people as he can. The only reason Trump hasn’t executed any Latinx prisoners is because those on federal death row haven’t exhausted their appeals.

Trump has a special hatred for Indigenous people. He refuses to pardon Leonard Peltier. The framed American Indian Movement leader has spent 44 years in federal prisons. 

Trump lost Arizona by just 10,457 votes. But he lost Arizona’s Apache County — which is 77% Indigenous — by 11,854 votes.

Trump’s lust for revenge is shared by his Proud Boy supporters. The fascists attacked two historic Black churches in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 12 and set Black Lives Matter banners on fire.

Many more executed by Trump

Those killed on federal death row are just a small percentage of those executed by Trump. He bragged about ordering U.S. Marshals to execute anti-racist activist Michael Reinoehl on Sept. 3 without a trial.    

Trump also executed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani by a drone strike in Baghdad on Jan. 3. The Iraqi government wasn’t consulted about assassinating the father of two children.

Thousands of children and adults killed by drones and bombs in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Yemen were executed by Trump. Two million Yemeni children suffering from severe malnutrition are being slowly executed by Trump.   

Will Biden be any different? The president-elect says he’s now against the death penalty. So is Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. 

Biden was singing another tune when he was a U.S. senator. He voted for the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. Some of those executed by Trump were killed under its provisions.

Biden declared that “the liberal wing of the Democratic Party is now for 60 new death penalties. The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is for 100,000 cops. The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is for 125,000 new state prison cells.” 

Biden changed his position on the death penalty only because of the Black Lives Matter movement with over 20 million people in the streets.

In 1988, George Bush-the-First defeated the Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis by 7 million votes. The elder Bush ran racist ads about Willie Horton, a Black prisoner, and emphasized Dukakis’ opposition to the death penalty.

Thirty-two years later, Joe Biden, running on an anti-death penalty platform, defeated Donald Trump by 7 million votes. Biden’s 81 million votes were almost double the votes cast for Dukakis.

Some Democratic Party leaders are claiming candidates can’t win calling for community control of the police or defunding them. That’s the same thing that was said about the death penalty.

Why isn’t Trump on death row?

If the death penalty is supposedly reserved for the worst murderers, why isn’t Elliot Abrams on death row? The war criminal has the blood of thousands on his hands by organizing death squads throughout Central America in the 1980s.

Abrams is now attempting to overthrow the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela’s elected president, Nicolás Maduro Moros.

Why isn’t Trump awaiting execution for murdering children? Among his victims was 19-month-old Mariee Juárez. She died because of neglect and mistreatment in one of Trump’s migrant concentration camps.    

The death penalty, like deportations and police terror, is meant to terrorize the working class.

There’s never been a millionaire executed in the U.S. The death penalty is reserved for the poor.

But it’s billionaires like Trump who spread death and misery all over the earth.


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