Trump proposes migrant fighting league and attacks immigrants
First Biden-Trump debate: What to watch out for
Joe Biden and Donald Trump will meet on June 27 for a special televised debate.
Former President Donald Trump again used inhumane language toward immigrants on Saturday when he announced before two separate events that he had pitched the idea of an immigrant fight club to UFC President Dana White.
“I said, ‘Dana, I have an idea. Why don’t you start a migrant fighters league and have your normal fighters league. And then you have the champion of your league – these are the greatest fighters in the world – fight the migrant champion. I think the migrant guy could win, they’re that tough,” Trump said at a meeting of the Faith & Freedom Coalition in Washington.
The presumptive Republican nominee’s comments drew laughter and applause at the Conservative Christian Conference, and he repeated them later in the day at a campaign rally in Philadelphia.
Trump added that White did not like the proposal, but said it was “not the worst idea I’ve ever had,” and called migrants in the U.S. “nasty, mean” and “tough people.” White confirmed Trump’s comments at a news conference in Saudi Arabia on Saturday.
“It was a joke. I saw everyone freaking out online. But yes, he said it,” White said.
President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign quickly condemned Trump’s comments. His remarks come after Biden issued an executive order to turn away migrants entering the country illegally when border crossings are high.
“It is fitting that convicted felon Donald Trump spent his time at a religious conference threatening to round up Latinos, bragging about stripping Americans of their freedoms and promising to take even more extreme action if he returns to power,” spokeswoman Sarafina Chitika said in a statement.
Kevin Munoz, a senior spokesman for the Biden campaign, also responded to Trump’s comments in a post on X (formerly Twitter), saying the former president had “spent his entire political career attacking Latinos.”
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Immigration and the southern border have long been a focus of the former president. Trump has said that if re-elected, he will deport millions of immigrants from the country, a move that would likely face immediate legal challenges and blockades from Democrats in Congress. The former president said last week that if re-elected, he would like to automatically issue green cards to foreign graduates of American universities.
Nevertheless, Trump’s comments on Saturday are the latest in a long line of derogatory remarks toward undocumented immigrants.
During the campaign, he told a crowd in New Hampshire that immigrants entering the U.S. illegally “poison the blood of our country.” Vice President Kamala Harris said the comment was “rightly justified,” comparing it to the rhetoric of dictators like Adolf Hitler. A 2019 USA Today analysis of more than five dozen of the former president’s rallies found that he had used words like “invasion” and “killer” 500 times at rallies to talk about immigrants.
Trump’s comments on Saturday sparked criticism online, including from Nobel laureate Peter Doherty and Douglas Rivlin, a senior communications director at America’s Voice, an immigration rights organization.
Rachel Barber is USA TODAY’s 2024 election reporter, focusing on politics and education. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, as @rachelbarber_
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