Donald Trump: My enemies want to behead me

Donald Trump has sent an email to supporters titled ‘haul out the guillotine’ as he seeks to raise funds for his re-election campaign.

Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Las Vegas. Picture: Getty Images.

Donald Trump has sent an email to supporters titled “haul out the guillotine” in an attack on political opponents as he seeks to raise funds for his re-election campaign.

Mr Trump said it was the “sick dream of every Trump-deranged lunatic” that he should be beheaded, recalling the comedian Kathy Griffin’s infamous 2017 mock-up photo holding his blood-soaked head.

In his appeal for cash, Mr Trump vowed to “never surrender … no matter how many vicious lies and attacks they throw our way”.

No Democratic opponent has called for his execution as punishment for his criminal conviction in New York for falsifying business records. He will be sentenced by a judge on July 11, and faces a maximum of four years in prison.

Griffin has struggled to rebuild her career after being sacked by CNN and losing other work after being put on a no-fly list and investigated by the Secret Service over the stunt.

“Remember when that Sicko Kathy Griffin made the rounds parading my BEHEADED head when I was President?!” Mr Trump is quoted as saying in the fundraising email. “The radical left CHEERED! Obama and Biden were SILENT! And the Fake News BLASTED it everywhere! … And it’s not just me they want gone, THEY’RE REALLY COMING AFTER YOU!”

Public executions have become something of an obsession among some Trump supporters, with a discussion of its use by Charlie Kirk, organiser of the right-wing student group Turning Point USA, and guests on his Thoughtcrime podcast.

“It should be public. It should be quick. It should be televised,” Mr Kirk said in February. “You could sell, you could fund the government. You could have like, ‘brought to you by Coca-Cola’. And, no, I’m not kidding. By the way, I would totally tune in to see some pedo get their head chopped off.”

Laura Loomer, a pro-Trump blogger, defended herself this week from accusations that she wanted to see Mr Trump’s opponents executed. She posted: “I never said I wanted to execute Democrats. I said there are many Democrat officials who should be tried for treason, and the punishment for treason is death, according to US law.”

Trump supporters at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, took along a scaffold and noose and chanted “Hang Mike Pence” after Mr Trump’s vice-president refused to go along with his demands to reject Joe Biden’s election victory.

Just over half of the 50 states retain capital punishment.

Mr Trump has called for an extension of the death penalty during his re-election campaign. “President Xi in China controls 1.4 billion people, with an iron hand, no drug problems, you know why they have no drug problems?” he said at a New Hampshire rally last year. “Death penalty for the drug dealers. You want to solve your drug problem, you have to institute a meaningful death penalty for … a drug dealer.”

THE TIMES