Culture

Trump On Mexico’s Immigrant Caravan: ‘Women Are Raped At Levels That Nobody Has Ever Seen Before’

During a roundtable discussion of tax reform in West Virginia on Thursday, President Trump apparently succumbed to his boredom and instead discussed the caravan of South American immigrants currently journeying toward the U.S.-Mexico border. The New York Times and other outlets have been covering the caravan extensively, as has Fox News, whose Tucker Carlson has repeatedly railed against the group’s approach as a supposed “invasion.” Perhaps this is the source of Trump’s frustration with the matter, for he revived campaign comments about Mexico’s rapists to make a false claim about women being raped.

According to video of Trump’s remarks broadcast by Fox News and shared on social media by BuzzFeed, the president began by ranting about Canada’s merit-based immigration system as opposed to the “lottery” system employed by the U.S. Then, somehow, “rape” entered the picture:

“Remember my opening remarks at Trump Tower when I opened. Everybody said, ‘Oh, he was so tough.’ I used the word ‘rape.’ And yesterday it came out with this journey coming up, women are raped at levels that nobody has ever seen before. They don’t want to mention that.”

Trump’s brief comparison and contrast of Canada and America’s respective immigration systems notwithstanding, neither the Times nor any other outlets whose journalists are in the field covering the caravan have reported any instances of rape. In fact, as Mediaite points out, the gathering “was organized to protect migrants making their way to Mexico and the U.S. from cartels crime, including rape.” BuzzFeed’s Adolfo Flores echoed these sentiments on Twitter. “I’ve been with the caravan for 12 days and haven’t seen or heard of anyone being ‘raped at levels that nobody has ever seen before,'” he wrote.

(Via BuzzFeed, Mediaite and New York Times)