In what was seen as an extreme display of demagoguery even by his standards, Trump drew cheers from an audience in Erie, Pennsylvania, with a picture of an out-of-control crime spree that he said could be ended “immediately” with one “real rough, nasty day”, or “one rough hour”

“You see these guys walking out with air conditioners with refrigerators on their back, the craziest thing,” Trump said. “And the police aren’t allowed to do their job. They’re told, if you do anything, you’re gonna lose your pension

“They’re not allowed to do it because the liberal left won’t let them do it. The liberal left wants to destroy them, and they want to destroy our country”

In a passage that provoked a storm on social media, the former president and Republican nominee then said: “If you had one day, like one real rough, nasty day with the drug stores as an example, where, when they start walking out with …”

He then trailed off in a digression to falsely accuse Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, of introducing a practice in California when she was attorney general that exonerated thieves from prosecution of items worth less than $950

Politico said the remark appeared to be a reference to proposition 47[…]
Trump continued: “You saw kids walk in with calculators. They didn’t want to go over the $950. They’re standing with calculators adding it up. You know, these are smart, smart people. They’re not so stupid, but they have to be taught

“Now, if you had one really violent day … one rough hour, and I mean real rough. The word will get out and it will end immediately”

The comments triggered a stream of comparisons to The Purge, a 2013 film that depicts the election of a radical new party called The New Founding Fathers of America following an economic collapse, which then enacts drastic policies to end crime and unemployment