Trump pushes immigration conspiracy theories and mass deportations
Former President Donald J. Trump falsely suggested in an interview aired Sunday on Fox News that Latin American governments were singling out the citizens they didn't want and sending them to the U.S. border, reviving a claim at the heart of his 2016 project. campaign.
He also accused the Chinese Communist Party – without providing any evidence – of orchestrating illegal immigration into the United States, and said he believed China would try to interfere in the presidential election, adding that he condemned President Xi Jinping 'very nice'.
When asked by the interviewer, Maria Bartiromo, if he thought “military-age men” from China “were ordered by the Communist Party to come here,” Mr. Trump said, “I believe so.”
Referring to a recent incident in New York City in which a group of men, identified by police officials as migrants from Latin America, attacked police officers, Mr. Trump said: “The heads of these countries are smart. They don't send the people who are doing a great job and who they love to the country. For the most part, they send people they don't want and put them in caravans.”
That statement echoed one of the most incendiary lines from his first campaign announcement speech in 2015: “When Mexico sends its people, they don't send their best,” he said at the time, continuing: “They bring drugs. They bring crime. They're rapists. And some, I suppose, are good people.” He has also repeatedly and incorrectly said that migrants from South and Central America come from “mental institutions” and prisons.
Mr. Trump also spoke approvingly, as he has done before, about the mass military-style deportation of Mexican immigrants under President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
“He was very strong on deportation, because a lot of people were coming into our country illegally, and he started a big, mass deportation,” Mr. Trump said. “He dropped them very close to the border, and they came back. Then he dropped them 2,000 miles away, and they never came back.”
Mass deportations are part of an extreme expansion of anti-immigration policies that Trump plans if he is re-elected.
The interview took place earlier on Thursday Saturday's military strikes against multiple locations in Yemen controlled by Houthi militants.
While much of the conversation focused on immigration and international affairs, there was also discussion of domestic politics.
Ms. Bartiromo asked Mr. Trump about Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, with whom he has had a rocky relationship. He suggested he would like to replace her. “I think she did well initially at the RNC,” he said. “I would say now that there will probably be some changes made.”
He spoke as the party gathered in Las Vegas for its annual meeting, where the conversation focused largely on Mr. Trump's power over the RNC and Ms. McDaniel's future as leader. Mr. Trump first recommended Ms. McDaniel as chairman in 2016, and she was a loyal leader during the 2020 election cycle and beyond. The two communicated directly and often, even when they disagreed. Mr. Trump, for example, refused to participate in one of the party's most important debates this cycle, and his team publicly pressured the party to cancel future debates.
In a separate interview on CNN's “State of the Union” on Sunday, Trump's latest Republican primary opponent, Nikki Haley, repeated an attack she has made several times in the past two weeks, accusing Trump of “playing politics with the politics'. border.” Mr. Trump has vociferously tried to kill a bipartisan immigration and border security deal in Congress.
“He shouldn't be getting involved by telling Republicans to wait until the election because we don't want this to help Biden win,” Ms. Haley said, adding: “He's definitely playing politics by telling them tell them not to do anything. ”
She walked back previous comments in which she had said Texas had the right to secede, despite the Supreme Court ruling in 1869 that unilateral secession was unconstitutional.
The discussion about secession stemmed from a recent Supreme Court decision that allowed the Biden administration to remove a concertina wire barrier that Texas had placed along its southern border.
“Texas has been talking about secession for a long time,” Ms. Haley said. “The Constitution does not allow that.” But she suggested she understood the impulse because “people don't think the government is listening to them.”
Mrs. Haley too appeared on “Saturday Night Live', who appeared in a skit as a 'South Carolina voter' at a CNN Trump town hall, asking why he refused to debate her.
Shane Goldmacher reporting contributed.