Donald Trump suggested over the weekend having migrants fight one another as a form of entertainment.
While President Joe Biden is preparing for his Thursday night debate with Trump, the Republican candidate for president has been on the campaign trail claiming he proposed a “migrant fight league” to UFC president Dana White.
“You’re going to go and start a new migrant fight league, migrants, only migrants,” Trump recounted saying to White while speaking at a Christian conference in Washington D.C. over the weekend. “At the end of the year, the champion migrant is going to fight your champion. And I hate to tell you Dana, I think the migrant might win. That’s how tough they are.”
The crowd cheered as Trump — who has a history of demonizing immigrants — told supporters White didn’t care for that plan.
“It’s not the worst idea I’ve ever had,” the 78-year-old Queens native joked.
Trump launched his first presidential run in 2015 by characterizing people coming into the U.S. through the southern border as drug dealing criminals and “rapists.”
He has since referred to some migrants as “bad hombres” who are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
During an interview last year, Trump denied knowing his sentiments echoed verbiage used by German dictator Adolf Hitler leading up to the Holocaust.
Immigration reform is shaping up to becoming one of the key issues of November’s presidential election. The Biden White House issued an executive order meant to moderate crossings at the nation’s southern border at the start of the month. Trump has consistently called for a wall to be built along that divide.
While gruesome crimes involving immigrants have captured headlines in recent months, numerous studies have found undocumented immigrants are far less likely than U.S. citizens to break the law.
