During a recent interview, President Trump expressed his support for reopening insane asylums to institutionalize mentally ill individuals on America’s streets.
Trump made the comments during a recent sitdown with The Daily Caller.
Daily Caller White House correspondent Reagan Reese sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office on Friday for an hour-long interview.
The president spoke at length about his efforts to clean up the streets of Washington, D.C., and said he was open to the idea of reopening insane asylums — recalling how such facilities once operated in New York.
Read the transcript below:
REESE: It’s horrible. I want to get to Russia. I want to ask you another question about D.C. crackdown. Would you be open to the government reopening insane asylums for people with serious mental illness?
TRUMP: Yeah I would.
REESE: You would?
TRUMP: Well, they used to have them, and you never saw people like we had, you know, they used to have them. And what happened is states like New York and California that had them, New York had a lot of them. They released them all into society because they couldn’t afford it. You know, it’s massively expensive. But we had, they were all over New York. I remember when I was growing up, Creedmoor. They had a place, Creedmoor, they had a lot of them, Bellevue, and they were closed by a certain governor. And I remember when they did, it was a long time ago, and I said they didn’t release these people? And they did. They released them into society, and that’s what you have. It’s a rough, it’s a rough situation.
REESE: How soon –
TRUMP: Why is that a big thing? People are thinking about that?
REESE: Well –
TRUMP: Because, you can’t have these people walking around.
REESE: I mean, what do you do with them? You know?
TRUMP: So dangerous, so dangerous. And they can live to be 85 years old.
REESE: I moved from Washington, D.C., to Virginia because I felt unsafe. We had an attempted break-in, me and my roommates from my place on Capitol Hill, and I just moved to Virginia, thinking it’s so much safer. And I had to call 911, the other day because I watched a homeless guy beat up a pedestrian. And the 911 –
TRUMP: When was that?
REESE: A week ago.
TRUMP: During my time?
REESE: This was in Virginia, though. This was not in Washington, D.C.
TRUMP: Oh in Virginia. We don’t take [inaudible.]
REESE: No I know. Now I’m saying, now I’m like, why did I move from Washington, D.C. to Virginia right after you cleaned it up?
TRUMP: So safe.
TRUMP: Yeah, I call it a crime free zone because we don’t play games. You know, I said they spit, we hit. You know, when these people – women – they’re standing up to these guys, good looking guys, and they want to do something, but they’re not allowed to. If they do, they’ll be arrested. They’ll arrest the soldiers. They had an arrest warrant out on every single soldier, if they hit back, there was an automatic arrest. So you have these people, they scream, they’re this far away, screaming. Some women, screaming, like crazy, they’re crazy. And then they start spitting in the face of the guy. And these guys are just, they wouldn’t, but they can’t do it. Now they can do it. So I said, we spit– they spit, we hit. Right?
More over at The Daily Caller:
🚨 BREAKING: Trump tells the Daily Caller he’d be open to reopening insane asylums for people with serious mental illness.
“You can’t have these people walking around." https://t.co/yUTVrGnmL3 pic.twitter.com/GyvrR6Kmww
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 1, 2025
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