Donald Trump reposted a clip of top aide Stephen Miller claiming the president wants to reopen Alcatraz prison, to house “villains and monsters.”
Speaking about the decision to Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Monday, Miller said: “Alcatraz was built at a time when this country was strong and it knew how to take care of villains and monsters.
“There are people in this country, as President Trump has said, who will do nothing with their lives but rape, maim, and murder. They cannot be rehabilitated, they cannot be saved, they cannot be coached into some better way of living.
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“They are always going to hurt. They are always going to steal. They are always going to attack. We need a place in this country where we can send people to visually demonstrate the total separation from society—the fact that they are not going to live among us and will never live among us.”
Trump posted an excerpt from the clip on Truth Social at around 2 a.m. on Tuesday, in apparent support of his deputy chief of staff’s comments. It came just hours after a rambling press conference in the Oval Office, where the president admitted the idea to re-open the long-shuttered facility came from watching movies.
“I was supposed to be a moviemaker,” Trump said. “It represents something very strong, very powerful in terms of law and order… Alcatraz is, I would say, the ultimate. Sing Sing and Alcatraz, right? The movies.”
Trump said he was aware the prison currently serves as a park and museum after being shut down in 1963, but suggested the site was “a big hulk that’s sitting there rusting and rotting.”
We’ll see if we can bring it back, in large form and a lot," Trump said. “It represents something that’s both horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable and weak.”
It follows a late-night posting spree on Sunday night, in which Trump wrote “REBUILD, AND OPEN ALCATRAZ!” on Truth Social, just hours after a South Florida PBS station aired the classic 1979 thriller Escape from Alcatraz, starring Clint Eastwood.
The president, who was staying at Mar-a-Lago in Palm beach that weekend, added: “For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat Criminal Offenders, the dregs of society, who will never contribute anything other than Misery and Suffering. When we were a more serious Nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm.”
“I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders.”
Appearing to reference both the escape and the movie on Monday, Trump told reporters: “nobody ever escaped” Alcatraz but “one person almost got there.” In Trump’s version of events though, “they found his clothing rather badly ripped up” and full of “shark bites.”
Alcatraz is named after the island on which it sits, just over one mile off the coast of San Francisco, California. The jail was built on the site of a former military fort and barracks that was first used as a jail during the Civil War. It was modernized and expanded in the 1930s, but closed in 1963.
