Trump’s Mass Deportation Promise Just Got More Unhinged

Donald Trump pledged over the weekend to begin the “largest deportation operation in history” if elected president, before flying off the rails into one of his most berserk speaking engagements to date, full of promises that ranged from ridiculous to terrifying, and lame complaints about his media coverage.

Trump’s speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “2024 Road to Majority” conference Saturday was a deluge of wild and inaccurate claims about immigrants aimed to stir the Christian conservative audience into a frenzy. But soon, things predictably descended into the kind of drivel for which the former president is known. 

While speaking about immigration, Trump interrupted himself, as he insisted that he knew there was a “slight difference” between “prisons and jails” and “mental institutions and insane asylums,” to once again talk about his favorite movie.  

“We have probably close to 20 million people that came in from all parts of the world. They’re gonna have to be gone,” Trump began, before abruptly changing topics.

“Whenever I say Silence of the Lambs, the fake news back there,” he said, pointing to the back of the room, “they say, ‘Oh, he’s talking about—he’s talking about Silence of the Lambs.’”

So true. 

“When I say ‘the late, great Hannibal Lecter,’ they say, ‘Oh, he likes Hannibal Lecter.’ No, they’re crazy,” he continued. 

Trump has repeatedly mentioned the iconic horror villain as a gross generalization about people who have entered the United States through its southern border, many of whom, he baselessly claims, have escaped from the world’s prisons, mental institutions, and insane asylums, because of course, there is a “slight difference.” 

Unfortunately for Trump, who regularly blunders in his off-the-rails rants, what he described was straight reporting of him weirdly praising a fictional cannibal. Still, he continued to insist that the media is unfairly covering him. 

“When I imitate Joe Biden can’t get off the stage, I walk into a wall, purposely,” Trump said, brilliantly noting that “sometimes they don’t have a wall, you’re free-standing.”

“But I imitate him, and I walk into a wall, and the next day they write ‘Donald Trump Could Not Find His Way Off The Stage,’ no, no!” Trump insisted that the Biden campaign is pushing the narrative that their candidate is “improperly covered,” while whining that he had been improperly covered. 

Throughout his speech, Trump repeatedly lashed out against immigrants in the U.S., who he claimed are “getting comfortable now, they’re going to start hitting us very hard. These people are bad.” 

He even floated the idea of a “migrant league of fighters” in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which UFC CEO Dana White quickly clarified was a joke. While it may have been a joke, it demonstrates that the former president does not really view immigrants as human. And as a result, his immigration policy is simultaneously unserious and bloodthirsty.