Former President Trump condemned the brutal murder of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols after five Memphis Police officers pepper sprayed and beat him.
“I thought it was terrible. He was in such trouble. He was just being pummeled. Now that should never have happened,” Trump said during an interview with the Associated Press.
In the video footage that was released on Friday, Nichols can be heard repeatedly crying out to for his mother and pleading with the men to let him go saying “I didn’t do anything.” Trump said that this part of the footage was particularly hard for him to hear.
“That was really the point that got me the most, to be honest with you," Trump continued.
The former president suggested that a simple traffic violation was not the motive for the five cops to attack Nichols, adding that the video footage is “pretty conclusive.”
"Look, the tape was perhaps not totally conclusive but, to me, it was pretty conclusive and it was vicious and violent and hard to believe — over a traffic violation," Trump said.
Trump repeated his comments to the Wall Street Journal where he decried the brutal incident saying “the video was pretty graphic. Unless there's something that isn't shown, it would certainly be a terrible thing that they did, terrible.”
Trump went on to praise Memphis Police for taking a “strong step” in permanently deactivating the SCORPION police unit, in which the cops involved in the incident were on.
SCORPION was created to target violent offenders in areas beset by high crime and stands for Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods.
However, when asked if he thinks the attack should lead to implementing police reforms, Trump stopped short of endorsing the idea.
“At the same time you have to stop crime,” he said. “So it's sort of like individual people. You have to get the right people that know when you have to be tough and when not to be tough. This was a case of being very, very tough — overly, overly crazy,” Trump said, adding “he was begging for his mother… that’s not a question of reform, that's a question of having people that understand what you have to do and understand life.”
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