- Trump commented on the Waukesha tragedy during an interview with Sean Hannity on Tuesday.
- "The good news is, he hated Trump, OK? He hated Trump, based on early reporting," Trump said.
- The New York Post reported that Darrell E. Brooks had written an anti-Trump rap song in the past.
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday weighed in on the tragedy in Waukesha, Wisconsin, during an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, managing to take solace in the fact that the suspect Darrell E. Brooks was apparently not a Trump supporter.
Brooks is accused of plowing his vehicle into a Christmas parade on Sunday, killing six people and wounding atleast 60 others. Hannity said Brooks had a "rap sheet a mile long," and asked Trump to comment on the incident.
"Well, he was out on bail, and he was a rough cookie, and it looked like they caught him in some other act," Trump said.
Brooks, 39, of Milwaukee, faces five counts of first-degree intentional homicide. Police also said that he was involved in a domestic dispute minutes prior to the parade incident.
"This guy was crazy, and a real professional criminal, and a bad guy," Trump said. "And the good news is, he hated Trump, OK? He hated Trump, based on early reporting."
Trump may have been referring to a story published Tuesday in the New York Post, which reported that Brooks wrote a rap song three years ago that included the phrase "fuck Donald Trump." In it, he also called the former president a "bitch" and a "closet racist." There's no evidence to suggest that politics played a role in the Waukesha tragedy.
According to court documents reviewed by Insider, Brooks was also arrested on November 2 on charges including obstructing an officer, bail jumping, second-degree recklessly endangering safety with domestic abuse assessments, and misdemeanor battery for allegedly attacking the mother of his child. "He should not have been out," Trump told Hannity.
Trump also seemed to fixate on the carnage of the scene, which eyewitnesses described as including "pom-poms, shoes, and spilled hot chocolate everywhere."
"Can you imagine? I looked at that car going in — somebody said 30 miles an hour, that was a lot more than 30 — right through the middle of a band of people, hitting them from the back? I've never seen anything like it," Trump said.
He also misstated the number of injured people and predicted that several more people would die.
"5 are dead, 40 are badly wounded, the 5 number will go much higher, all because of a bad guy and he was out on bail, a very low bail," Trump added.
Hannity at that point referenced the fact that Brooks was released from jail on November 11, just days before the incident, with his bail set at $1,000.
"The State's bail recommendation in this case was inappropriately low in light of the nature of the recent charges and the pending charges against Mr. Brooks," the Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office said in a statement on Monday.
"Just a terrible, terrible situation, I mean, just terrible," Trump concluded.
—bryan metzger (@metzgov) November 24, 2021
On Monday morning, the former president also issued a statement calling the incident "devastating, horrible, and very very sick."
—Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) November 22, 2021