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By Aila Slisco
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Former President Donald Trump is facing mockery over a video clip that appears to show him promising to bring "very powerful crime" to Washington, D.C.
Trump inadvertently suggested that he would inspire a crime wave in the nation's capital during a "bonus" portion of his Tuesday night Fox News town hall that aired on the conservative news network's The Ingraham Angle on Wednesday night.
"We're going to take over Washington, D.C.," Trump said. "We're going to federalize. We're going to have very powerful crime. And you're going to be proud of it again. We're going to take the graffiti off the beautiful marble columns, the swastikas off the columns, and we're going to make it beautiful again."
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A short clip of the moment that ends before the graffiti removal remark quickly circulated on X, formerly Twitter. The reelection campaign of President Joe Biden and a number of Trump critics took the opportunity to ridicule the former president over the gaffe.
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"Trump, confused: We're gonna have very powerful crime. And you're gonna be proud of it again," the Biden campaign wrote while sharing the clip.
"Donald Trump on his plan for a second term: 'We're going to have a very powerful crime, and you're going to be proud of it again,'" wrote Republicans Against Trump on its X account.
"'We are going to have very powerful crime.' Yes, that's what the courts seem to have figured out about you, Don," wrote @CryptidPolitics, an account associated with the now-defunct presidential campaign of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
"'We're going to have very powerful crime,'" @AntiToxicPeople wrote. "His brain is shredded. Though yes, if he was in D.C. he would be a one man crime wave again."
"Seems like a Freudian slip," @bo_palinic wrote. "If he wins in November, he'll be bringing very powerful crime to the White House."
"As I said, Operation Let Him Talk is a gold mine!" wrote @BaddCompani. "'We're going to have very powerful crime.'"
Newsweek reached out for comment to the Trump campaign via email on Wednesday night.
Trump, the leading Republican candidate in this year's presidential election and Biden's likely opponent in November, originally made the remarks after claiming that "everyone" at the town hall event, which took place in South Carolina, was "in great danger."
"These people, everybody in this room is in great danger right now," Trump said. "We have a nuclear weapon that if you hit New York, South Carolina's gonna be gone too. I worry about their safety, I think it's the reason I'm doing this."
The former president then vowed to offer assistance to crime-ridden cities, which he said were "all run by Democrats," before turning his attention more specifically to crime in Washington.
"We have people going in from South Carolina," Trump told host Laura Ingraham. "They want to go and see the Washington Monument or something, anything, and they end up getting shot in Washington, D.C. You know it better than anybody, it's dangerous."
"I want to federalize it," he continued. "I want to take it back. We want to clean it, fix the roads. The roads have potholes. I can imagine these leaders coming in ... from other countries, they look at roads that are filthy dirty."
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