Donald Trump has told 37 people on death row who had their sentences commuted by Joe Biden to “go to hell” in a lacerating Christmas Day social media post.
The president-elect – long a vocal advocate of capital punishment – lashed out at Biden’s decision on his Truth Social platform, after wishing a merry Christmas to political opponents he addressed as “Radical Left Lunatics”.
He then turned to those shown clemency by Biden in a decision announced on Monday: “ … to the 37 most violent criminals, who killed, raped, and plundered like virtually no one before them, but were just given, incredibly, a pardon by Sleepy Joe Biden. I refuse to wish a Merry Christmas to those lucky ‘souls’ but, instead, will say, GO TO HELL!”
Biden’s move reduced the death sentences of 37 out of 40 prisoners on federal death row to life imprisonment without parole and followed pressure from campaigners who warned that they were likely to be executed on Trump’s return to the White House.
The exceptions applied to three men who had been convicted of offences regarded as terrorism or hate crimes, including Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was found guilty of carrying out the 2013 Boston marathon bombing attack.
Biden – a one-time adherent of capital punishment – said in a statement that “guided by my conscience … I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”
During his first presidency, Trump restarted federal executions after a 17-year gap, eventually presiding over more than the previous 10 presidents combined.
Biden’s commutation order won the praise of campaigners, including Martin Luther King III, the son of the murdered civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
The majority of those whose sentences were commuted are people of colour, and 38% are Black, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
One of Trump’s earliest forays into the political arena was a full-page advert calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty after the rape of a jogger in New York City’s Central Park in 1989 and the subsequent arrests of five Black and Latino teenagers, who were charged and eventually convicted of the crime. All five, who denied involvement, were ultimately exonerated and released from prison after another man belatedly made a confession that was confirmed by DNA evidence.
The men, now in their 50s, sued Trump for defamation after he falsely said during a presidential debate with Kamala Harris in Philadelphia in September that they had admitted guilt and that the victim had been killed.
In another segment of his Christmas Day post, Trump sarcastically offered season’s greetings to Chinese troops serving in the Panama Canal, which he has publicly mused be returned to the US, and to the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, whom he taunted with the title “governor” in the latest of several demeaning provocations since winning November’s presidential election.
“Merry Christmas to all, including to the wonderful soldiers of China, who are lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama Canal (where we lost 38,000 people in its building 110 years ago), always making certain that the United States puts in Billions of Dollars in ‘repair’ money, but will have absolutely nothing to say about ‘anything’,” he wrote.
“Also, to Governor Justin Trudeau of Canada, whose Citizens’ Taxes are far too high, but if Canada was to become our 51st State, their Taxes would be cut by more than 60%, their businesses would immediately double in size, and they would be militarily protected like no other Country anywhere in the World.”
Christmas wishes were also extended to the residents of Greenland, “which is needed by the United States for National Security purposes and, who want the US to be there, and we will”. This was a reference to his call, initially made during his first presidency, that Denmark – which has sovereignty over the territory – sell it to the US. Both Denmark and Greenland’s autonomous administration have said that it is not for sale.
In a later unrelated post, Trump wrote that he had met the retired Canadian ice hockey star Wayne Gretzky and asked him to run for the prime minister’s office, “soon to be known as the Governor of Canada”.
