How Donald Trump uses the death of a young Ukrainian politically

They are difficult to bear: For a few days, supporters of US President Donald Trump have been flooding the Internet with recordings of a surveillance camera. They show how a young woman is stabbed in a tram by a man behind. With the incident in the city of Charlotte in North Carolina, Trump legitimizes his approach to Chicago, Washington and other strongholds of the Democratic Party.

“It is literally to be seen how the blood of this innocent woman drips from the blade of the murderer, and now her blood sticks to the hands of the Democrats, who refuse to put evil people in prison,” Trump writes in his online service Truth Social.

The victim: 23-year-old Ukrainian INNA Zarutska, who fled to the United States with her family with her family before the Russian attack war in 2022. The alleged perpetrator: Decarlos Brown, a 34-year-old black man with a longer criminal record. Among other things, he had been in prison for eight years because of armed robbery.

The victim-perpetrator image that Trump’s supporters spread is meaningful: a pretty young woman with big dark eyes and blond-colored hair next to the profile of a disturbed black black with Rastalocken and tattoos. In some pictures that may be reworked with artificial intelligence, the Ukrainian recalls Marilyn Monroe.

“North Carolina and every other state need law and order,” Trump wrote, “and only the Republicans will deliver!” Even before the Ukrainian’s killing, Trump had described and announced Trump Chicago as the “most dangerous city in the world” against the allegedly rampant crime. The ICE immigration police are now masked by storm hoods in a so-called “lightning” operation against migrants.

The national guard has been in use in the capital Washington for almost a month, patrolling the soldiers armed with quick -fire rifles in the city center and at train stations. Trump had also used soldiers in Los Angeles after protests against his immigration policy.

Critics accuse Trump to overdo the extent of crime in order to justify his increasingly authoritarian appearance. In any case, the police statistics for Chicago, Washington and other Democrat strongholds do not increase, in the U.S. capital the numbers before Trump’s takeover were even significantly declining (Read a fact check here).

The Ukrainian case is water on the mills of Trump’s Maga movement (“Make America Great Again”, makes America great again). The spokeswoman for the White House, Karoline Leavitt, accused the Democrats and the traditional leading media on Tuesday to marry the matter, even though all US media broadly reported on the case and Trump’s reaction.

The Democratic Party, which struggles with falling survey values, is loudly defending itself against Trump’s authoritarian approaches, especially the governor of California, Gavin Newsom. But the Democrats, who have worked under President Joe Biden for Ukraine and their refugees, have become defensive in this case.

Some of them criticize the reaction of the democratic mayor of Charlotte, VI Lyles, to the killing of the Ukrainian. Lyles had expressed her condolences to the members of the young woman. However, she will not “demonize those who have to struggle with their mental health or are homeless,” she wrote with a view to the alleged perpetrator who, according to media reports, is said to have had psychological problems. Like him, the mayor is black.

In any case, the Trump government wants to set an example in this case. Minister of Justice Pam Bondi has now announced that he would call for the maximum penalty at the federal level against the suspect. The 34-year-old threatens the death penalty.