Former President Donald Trump puzzled people with his latest dog-whistle attack on immigrants during a speech on the U.S. border in Eagles Pass, Texas, on Thursday.
The Republican 2024 front-runner repeated his usual fear-mongering rhetoric when he claimed — without offering any evidence to back up his assertion — that, “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. They’re being let into our country, and it’s horrible.”
Trump then focused on what he considered a highly important issue: the languages talked by those who go to the U.S.
“Nobody can explain to me how allowing millions of people from places unknown, from countries unknown, who don’t speak languages,” he confusingly railed. “We have languages coming into our country, we have nobody that even speaks those languages. They’re truly foreign languages. Nobody speaks them and they’re pouring into our country, and they’re bringing with them tremendous problems, including medical problems, as you know.”
CNN’s fact-checking reporter Daniel Dale told anchor Kaitlan Collins that Trump has made a similar claim before “about people arriving speaking languages that no one‘s ever heard.”
“He said in a previous, recent speech, ‘We didn‘t even have one translator who could understand this language,’” recalled Dale. “I‘ve looked into this, seems to be just conjured out of thin air. It‘s nonsense.”
Critics on X (formerly Twitter) scratched their heads over Trump’s “don’t speak languages” logic.