Donald Trump’s former White House aide is under fire after a video showed him claiming to distribute fake money to homeless people so that they will be arrested when they spend it.
Johnny McEntee, formerly the White House Presidential Personnel Office under the former president, posted a video on TikTok in which he discusses the purported scheme to “clean up the community.”
“So I always keep this fake Hollywood money in my car, so when a homeless person asks for money, and I give them like a $5 bill, I feel good about myself, they feel good,” said McEntee, also a senior advisor to Project 2025. “And then when they go to use it, they get arrested, so I’m actually helping to clean up the community and get them off the street.”
A key point in your statement is ‘person’. Though it’s not universal, humans are understood to have better… Well, understanding of their actions. A vicious dog doesn’t understand that they’re vicious, they just rip and tear. A human is supposed to have that inner monologue to say “No.”
So, you release a dangerous animal on someone, you’re at fault. You kill someone, you’re at fault.
In George Floyd’s case, the cop is responsible. 1000%. I’ve been in situations, I’ve pointed a gun and I waited. Even when someone might be rigged to blow, you don’t just shoot them. Whomever called the cops isn’t responsible because the Cop should’ve been expected to be a human and not some deity who can do no wrong. Yes, everyone in America at this point should know that cops aren’t your friend but some people don’t know that.
(I was taking a bit of a jab at cops by implying they aren’t capable of free agency, which could have been more clear.)
I’m not sure if you understood my point. An absolutist approach isn’t representative of the real world, which is fine because representations don’t have to be perfect (by definition, I think). The question isn’t where do you draw the line, as with all trolley problem questions it’s why do you draw the line. Did the person who called the cops get him killed? Well, in an absolutist view, yes they did. They put him in the situation to get him killed. The cops are also guilty of killing him, as is the person who made the hypothetical counterfiet money.
But since we do not live in a truly accurate representation nor too a strict absolutist one, where do we draw that line? Its not a question of where in the legal code do we draw that line, or if their behavior was excusable or inexcusable, it’s a question about how we determine the answer to those questions.