Trump echoes Nazi propaganda and pushes lie that ‘no one speaks languages’ of migrants in wild border speech
Donald Trump falsely claimed that “nobody speaks the languages” of migrants crossing the US’s southern border, in another wild and rambling campaign speech, in which he also echoed his previous remarks that were criticised as being similar to Nazi propaganda.
Both Mr Trump and President Joe Biden held duelling campaign trips to the southern border on Thursday in an attempt to seize the narrative around immigration.
The former president, speaking from Eagle Pass, Texas, wildly claimed that there were “millions of people from places unknown” coming into the US that “don’t speak languages”.
“Everybody I speak to says how horrible it is, nobody can explain to me how allowing millions of people from places unknown, from countries unknown, who don’t speak languages,” he said.
“We have languages coming into our country, nobody that speaks those languages. They’re truly foreign languages. Nobody speaks them.”
The national language of Mexico is Spanish. Census figures from 2019 showed that there were almost 42 million people that speak Spanish in US homes.
Mr Trump’s language lies follow what border officials have signalled is a growing number of people crossing the US-Mexico border, with Republican states moving thousands of migrants into Democratic-led cities.
Elsewhere in his remarks on Thursday the former president slammed what he tried to claim is the “Joe Biden invasion”, claiming it has led to a surge in “migrant crime” and directly linking it to the death of Georgia college student Laken Hope Riley.
He also claimed that jails and mental institutions around the world are being emptied into the US, saying: “They’re coming from jails, and they’re coming from prisons, and they’re coming from mental institutions, and they’re coming from insane asylums, and they’re terrorists.”
The comments added a new twist to his previous “poisoning the blood” remarks in December that were called out for echoing Nazi rhetoric.
At the time, the former president said: “They’re poisoning the blood of the country. That’s what they’ve done … They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world. Not just in South America.
“Not just the three or four countries we think about. But all over the world they’re coming into our country, from Africa, from Asia.”
Following Mr Trumps speech on Thursday, even Fox News made sure to fact check some of what he had said, with anchor Neil Cavuto saying: “When you hear it from Donald about the 2020 election and how he got millions of more votes -- in fact, he did get millions of more votes [than 2016].
“He still lost that election. That is not in doubt anymore.”
