Home Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) slammed President Trump’s push to reopen the historic Alcatraz jail close to San Francisco as “the stupidest initiative put forth by this administration” on Thursday.
“Being robust on crime isn’t turning Alcatraz, which will not even be a jail for a very long time to return — I do not assume it will ever occur,” Pelosi, a frequent Trump critic, stated in an interview on MSNBC’s “Chris Jansing Stories.”
“This isn’t about being robust on crime. It is being frivolous about cash and foolish in regards to the decisions they’ve made,” she added.
“I’ve stated this isn’t solely silly, with stiff competitors…the stupidest initiative put forth by this administration.”
Trump floated the idea of reopening the hulking Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in Might to house “America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders.” The president stated this month that “conceptional work” began on the challenge six months in the past with “varied jail improvement companies” engaged.
“I wished one thing consultant to point out how we combat again, after which, it occurred, I noticed an image of ALCATRAZ trying so foreboding, and I stated, ‘We’re going to look into renovating and rebuilding the well-known ALCATRAZ Jail sitting excessive on the Bay, surrounded by sharks. What an emblem it’s, and might be!'” Trump wrote in a July 1 post on Reality Social. “Nonetheless just a little early, however numerous promise!”
Inside Secretary Doug Burgum and Lawyer Normal Pam Bondi visited the prison web site on Thursday, with each touting efforts to show the shuttered facility right into a detention web site.
“This administration is restoring security, justice, and order to our streets,” Burgum wrote on the social platform X.
The Alcatraz jail was shuttered in 1963, with the Bureau of Prisons deeming it “too costly to proceed working.” Alcatraz Island, situated a few mile off the coast within the San Francisco Bay, now operates as a nationwide park and attracts greater than 1,000,000 guests every year.
“Proper now, it is a vacationer attraction which has been a venue for artwork and neighborhood occasions, one thing that this administration does not recognize, clearly,” Pelosi stated Thursday. “And, after all, the environmental concern is of no concern of theirs.”
Pelosi, who has represented a California district that covers most of San Francisco for almost 4 many years, had earlier ripped the jail reopening concept in a written assertion on Wednesday.
“It ought to concern us all that clearly the one mental sources the Administration has drawn upon for this silly notion are decades-old fictional Hollywood films,” she wrote.