Former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event in Tucson, Ariz., on Thursday. Trump has used a swing through the south west to focus on economic issues but despite touting his economic policies, the candidate has continued to focus on immigration and repeating false and debunked conspiracies about immigrant communities.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump is on swing through the southwest, with rallies in Tucson, Ariz. and Las Vegas, and a press conference this morning at his Los Angeles golf course.
According to campaign statements, he’s focused on the economy in Arizona and Nevada, where the cost of living — particularly the cost of housing — is top of mind for voters in states where rents and mortgages have soared since the pandemic.
But in this region that is so tied to the U.S.-Mexico border, as the former president views immigration as a strength, he’s also continued to peddle false information about immigrant communities in Aurora, Colo., and Springfield, Ohio.
After bringing up debunked claims about immigrants in Tuesday’s presidential debate, Trump spent much of his rally address in Tucson repeating false claims that legal Haitian migrants — who he falsely claims are illegal — are abducting and eating family pets.
And despite pushback from officials in Colorado, he continues to say Venezuelan gangs are running rampant and unchecked in the Denver suburb of Aurora.
During his California press conference, Trump repeated his campaign promise for mass deportation, name checking Ohio and Colorado..
“We will have the largest deportation in the history of our country. And we’ll start with Springfield and Aurora,” Trump said Friday morning.
Pleas from officials in both cities to stop inciting hate in their communities have gone unheeded by Trump and his campaign.
Friday in California, Trump went on to try to fact check his false claims about a rise in violent crime — again attributing it to an increase in migrant-related crime without evidence. He claimed that the FBI falsified its own reporting on violent crime without giving any reasoning for that claim. There is no evidence the FBI has reporting crime statistics differently.
The former president’s rhetoric is not new, but the false reports spread by him and fellow Republicans play into his campaign message of fear of the immigrant community, and his attacks of Vice President Harris for the Biden administration’s border policies.
Source link
