Trump rants about Haitians and AIDS while discussing immigration with Fox News
Without evidence, the former president also claims that dozens of countries are sending newly released prisoners to America
Former President Donald Trump leaned in to familiar racist language in an interview with his friend Sean Hannity on Fox News Thursday night.
The former president, who is reportedly considering another run for office in 2024, offered his opinion on the challenge of immigration in the U.S.
Trump claimed, without explanation or evidence, that dozens of countries around the world are intentionally sending newly released prisoners to America.
“I hear it’s 50 countries! They are emptying out their prisons into the United States,” declared Trump, according to the Daily Beast. “Some of the toughest people on earth are being dumped into the United States because they don’t want them. They don’t want to take care of them for the next 40 years!”
Hannity then asked the twice-impeached former president if he felt that incoming migrants should be tested for COVID, or have some other “health check.”
“So, we have hundreds of thousands of people flowing in from Haiti,” the former president exclaimed. “Haiti has a tremendous AIDS problem. AIDS is a step beyond. AIDS is a real bad problem.”
Trump continued: “So hundreds of thousands of people are coming into our country, and if you look at the stats and you look at the numbers, if you look at just – take a look at what’s happening in Haiti, a tremendous problem with AIDS. Many of those people will probably have AIDS and they’re coming into our country. We don’t do anything about it. We let everybody come in. It’s like a death wish, like a death wish for our country!”
Trump has previously made similar claims about Haitians. While in office in 2017, he said Haitian immigrants “all have AIDS,” according to a report from the New York Times.
In 2018, Trump slammed Haiti and several African nations as “shithole countries.” According to CNN, Trump told a bipartisan group of senators in the Oval Office: “Why do we want all these people from ‘shithole countries’ coming here?”
The president made these comments during a meeting with six senators hoping to come to a compromise on immigration.
As the senators proposed a visa lottery in order to secure Temporary Protected Status for several embattled nations, Trump went on to ask why the U.S. would want more people from Haiti and African countries, rather than countries such as Norway. The president also asked if Haiti could be left out of the plan, reported the New York Times. “Why do we want people from Haiti here?”
According to a new report from The Washington Post, Trump, 75, is considering running for president again. However, he is focused on a strategy of elusiveness.
Trump has told advisers that he plans to run for the presidency in 2024, yet some remain skeptical and others have urged the former president to endorse candidates for the 2022 midterms in an effort to win back the House and Senate for the Republican Party in what they are calling a “wink and nod” strategy.
This article features reporting from TheGrio’s Gerren Keith Gaynor.
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