Trump reminded of Alice Johnson while renewing his call for executing drug dealers

Former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination, appeared confused when reminded that a convicted cocaine dealer he ordered released in 2018 would have been put to death under his latest proposal to execute drug dealers.

“You’ve said you’d be in favor of the death penalty for drug dealers. Still the case?” asked Fox News “Special Report” anchor Bret Baier during an exchange with the 77-year-old that aired Tuesday.

“That’s the only way you’re gonna stop it,” Trump declared, adding that “a drug dealer will kill approximately 500 people during the course of his or her life.”

Baier then brought up Alice Johnson, a Tennessee grandmother who had served 21 years of a life sentence in connection with her non-violent involvement in a cocaine distribution ring.

Trump commuted Johnson’s sentence during his second year in office and issued her and other drug convicts a full pardon in August 2020 after being lobbied by reality TV star Kim Kardashian.

“I focused on non-violent crime,” Trump said, touting his First Step Act criminal justice reform bill, which allowed thousands of offenders to re-enter society.

“As an example, a woman who you know very well was in jail. She had 24 more years to serve, she served for 22 years. Alice,” the former president said.

“But she’d be killed under your plan,” Baier retorted, prompting Trump to reply, “Huh?”

“As a drug dealer,” the anchor continued.

“No, no. No. Under my, oh, under that? Uhh, it would depend on the severity,” Trump improvised.

“She’s technically a former drug dealer. She had a multimillion-dollar cocaine ring,” Baier continued, noting that Johnson had appeared in a Super Bowl commercial meant to boost Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign.

“Even Alice Johnson? In that ad?” the anchor pressed.

“She can’t do it, OK?” the former president said.

“By the way, if that was there, she wouldn’t be killed, it would start as of now,” he said, making a chopping motion to hammer home his point. “Starting now; but she wouldn’t have done it if it was death penalty. In other words, if it was death penalty, she wouldn’t have been on that phone call [that led to her conviction]. She wouldn’t have been a dealer.”

At the time of Johnson’s release, Trump’s White House touted its leniency in a statement.

“While this Administration will always be very tough on crime, it believes that those who have paid their debt to society and worked hard to better themselves while in prison deserve a second chance,” the statement read.

While president, Trump praised authoritarian leaders in China and the Philippines for putting drug dealers to death and has revived that rhetoric in his third consecutive run for the White House — telling an audience in New Hampshire that capital punishment was “the only way” to keep fentanyl-trafficking cartels out of the US and tackle the nation’s opioid crisis.

“We’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts,” Trump said, while pledging to ask Congress to pass a law enacting the brutal practice.

The proposal comes after almost two dozen US states have legalized recreational marijuana use and a growing number of municipalities have moved to decriminalize possession of hard drugs.