On Wednesday, President Donald Trump posted an image of two patches supposedly worn by police officers in Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, which bore the skull symbol used by Marvel Comics’ the Punisher, with each skull sporting Trump’s distinctive blonde hair style. This image caused one writer for the famously conservative National Review to tear apart the president’s lack of understanding as to “what law enforcement is supposed to stand for.”
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As Jim Geraghty explained, “Police forces using the symbol of the Punisher have been a recurring controversy, for reasons that are self-evident to anyone familiar with the comics or the various film and television versions. The character, Frank Castle, is clearly and explicitly an antihero, a vigilante who operates outside of the law and quite frequently just straight-up murders his foes.”
Geraghty argues that it’s one thing for the general public to enjoy such vigilante stories, “but it’s another thing to see those who take an oath to uphold the law enthusiastically adopt the image of a character who rejects the criminal justice system and its laws protecting the rights of the accused.”
And he’s far from the only one to have such an opinion. As Geraghty notes, even the Punisher creator Gerry Conway has asserted that the police’s embrace of his symbol “is an indication that they don’t understand what the character represents, or what law enforcement’s role in society is, either.”
Here he quotes Conway at length, who once asserted, “The vigilante anti-hero is fundamentally a critique of the justice system, an example of social failure, so when cops put Punisher skulls on their cars or members of the military wear Punisher skull patches, they’re basically sides with an enemy of the system. They are embracing an outlaw mentality. Whether you think the Punisher is justified or not, whether you admire his code of ethics, he is an outlaw. He is a criminal. Police should not be embracing a criminal as their symbol.”
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As Geraghty notes, the comic series even once had a storyline when the Punisher himself explicitly tells the police they should not be using his symbols or methods, saying, “You guys need a role model? His name is Captain America, and he’d be happy to have you.”
Trump has a well-documented history of advocating for police violence. During his first term, he told an audience of police, “Please don’t be too nice” when making arrests. Another notable example came during his 2024 campaign, when he called for “one real rough, nasty” and “violent day” of police brutality that he claimed would eradicate crime “immediately.”
For Geraghty, the promotion of the Punisher symbol is yet another example of Trump’s impulse toward lawless violence.
“I realize ‘president shares crazy thing on Truth Social’ isn’t really big news anymore,” Geraghty concludes, “but it does seem like one more illustration that the man atop the executive branch of the U.S. government doesn’t understand what law enforcement is supposed to stand for.”
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