No escaping Alcatraz as Trump offers up another shiny distraction

Irish Times

10-05-2025

'I don't know if he was watching The Rock or what inspired this,' the California governor
Gavin Newsom
sighed when asked about US president
Donald Trump
's left-field announcement that he had ordered the prison authorities to reopen Alcatraz.
The forbidding island located in the bright choppy waters of San Francisco bay has become one of the city's most enduring landmarks. It stopped operating as a prison in 1963, when the authorities decided that maintaining this exotically located penitentiary was simply too costly. Now, it brings in $60 million (€53 million) annually as one of San Francisco's most popular tourist attractions.
'You can't even come up with a more colossally bad fiscal idea. Nothing about this makes any sense,' said Newsom.
Many international economists would defend Trump on this one, arguing that he has, in fact, come up with several monumentally worse fiscal ideas, with tariffs leading that list.
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Whether Trump happened to catch the Sean Connery prison caper Newsom referenced is unknown. But the Hollywood Reporter established that the Palm Beach local channel WLRN had, in fact, broadcast the 1979 classic Escape From Alcatraz last Sunday morning. It had aired about two hours before Trump shared his vision for a gleaming, restored symbol of American justice on Truth Social.
Easy to imagine any president, while flicking through the tedious weekend news segments fixating on their cryptocurrency interests or complaining that a third term in office would be unconstitutional, stumbling on Clint Eastwood, denim clad and wind-burnt, plotting his ingenious escape from the infernal prison, and then ordering another coffee and settling in.
A cell block on Alcatraz Island. Photograph: Ian Bates/The New York Times
'One person almost got there but they – as you know, they found his clothing rather badly ripped up,' Trump said during the week about Alcatraz's storied jailbreak yarns.
'A lot of shark bites. A lot of problems. Nobody's ever escaped from Alcatraz and it just represented something strong having to do with law and order. We need law and order in this country. You look at it ... you saw that picture that was put out. It's sort of amazing. But it sort of represents something that is both horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable, weak. It's got a lot of qualities that are interesting.'
Nobody can prove that Trump was inspired by watching the film on WLRN. But something had triggered a vivid response to that West Coast landmark in his mind.
As bleak American jails come, there is something fascinating about Alcatraz. That's one of the reasons why an estimated 1.4 million people take the lonely boat ride out there every year, to tour its dateless interior and peer through the bars into Al Capone's old cell.
Economists have marvelled at the jaw-dropping impracticality of the idea and the sheer architectural and civic challenges of imposing contemporary prison standards on a crumbling early 20th-century edifice
And in typically peculiar phrasing Trump managed to capture the weird essence of the place. Anyone who has ever visited Alcatraz absorbs the contradictory point: the primary beauty of the sea and sky against the crushing aura of solitude and misery of the building itself.
Trump's vision for a 21st-century version of Alcatraz is connected to his administration's immigration deportation policy, as he explained during the week.
'So many of these radicalised judges, they want to have trials for every single person who came into our country illegally – that would mean millions of trials.' By trials, he meant 'hearings' or the due process that Democratic adversaries warn has been gravely undermined in the first 100 days.
Last Sunday's film was broadcast on an affiliate of PBS, the publicly funded broadcaster which, along with radio's NPR, has suffered the wrath of the president who has ordered cuts to crucial federal funding. It was linked to another Trump announcement: to save
Hollywood
's declining film and television production industry by imposing 100 per cent tariffs on productions outside the United States. It was a plan that
caused alarm
within the international film industry and in Hollywood.
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Political opponents and commentators have dismissed Trump's Alcatraz dream as just that: another shiny distraction tossed into the air to catch the eye of millions and turn minds away from the real issues for a day or two.
Economists have marvelled at the jaw-dropping impracticality of the idea and the sheer architectural and civic challenges of imposing contemporary prison standards on a crumbling early 20th-century edifice. Not to mention destroying what has long been established as a magnet for tourists who get to walk through a living, breathing museum piece. Against all that, Trump can argue that a new Alcatraz would be a cool monument to his new America. And he is the president.
William Marshall III, newly appointed as the Bureau of Prisons' director, understood the brief when he issued his statement on the subject on Monday. 'USP Alcatraz has a rich history. We look forward to restoring this powerful symbol of law, order and justice. We will be actively working with our law enforcement and other federal partners to reinstate this very important mission.'
Maybe there is no escaping Alcatraz after all.