Former President Donald Trump spoke about immigrations at the CPAC conference in Washington, DC this weekend. Trump claimed: “We have countries, honestly, that nobody has ever heard of. We have languages coming into our country, we don’t have one instructor in our entire nation that can speak that language.”
He added, “These are languages, it’s the craziest thing, we have languages that no one in this country has ever heard of. It’s a very horrible thing.”
Trump then claimed that when he was POTUS he told the president of Mexico — Andrés Manuel López Obrador — that Mexico would have to give the U.S. 28,000 soldiers “free of charge” to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border where Trump built a partial wall. Trump then impersonated the Obrador’s accent and said, “No, no, no, Donald, I will not,” which triggered laughter from the crowd.
I’m not sure what’s worse – the brazen racism and xenophobia or the sheer dumbness and ignorance.
Also – imagine if Biden did a crappy impression of the Mexican president, complete with bad accent, during a speech? It’d be front page news and on a loop on cable. https://t.co/BldknthSGC
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) February 25, 2024
Former MSNBC star and political commentator Mehdi Hasan reacted to the speech: “I’m not sure what’s worse – the brazen racism and xenophobia or the sheer dumbness and ignorance. Also – imagine if Biden did a crappy impression of the Mexican president, complete with bad accent, during a speech? It’d be front page news and on a loop on cable.”
Note: Fact-ehecking other Trump claims about Mexico-U.S. border cooperation, CNN reported in 2023 that the wall on the border with Mexico was entirely paid for by the U.S. government and that “Trump failed to fulfill his unequivocal campaign promise to get Mexico to pay for ‘100% of the project.’”