OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
After his trip to the border on Thursday, former President Donald Trump spoke to Fox News host Sean Hannity, where he declared the state of Texas to be a “war zone.”
“Thousands coming from Afghanistan. Now al Qaeda has training camps up again,” the host said.
“Then, you know, over 10,000, 12,000, 14,000 from Russia, and I read recently over 37,000 from China. Now, why would they make that long journey to our southern border? And my fear is that we are — we have in this country, because these illegals are not vetted, I fear that terror cells have set up in this country that will plot, plan, scheme the next 9/11 or worse,” Hannity continued.
“I pray to God, as I said, I’m wrong. I don’t think I’m wrong, Mr. President,” he said.
“Well, China, as of today, 29,000 young men, for the most part, in our country for the last three or four months. And there’s something going on. Look, there’s something going on,” Trump began.
“Now hopefully we don’t have that problem with China. I always had a good relationship with China until the COVID came in. That was a step too far. We took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China. No president took in $0.10, not $0.10. And we — you know, we still got along with them,” he said.
“But when you look at this, and when you look at other countries, we have a lot coming in from Iran, we have a lot coming in from, you know, places that we are fighting right now. You know, here go the bombs, you don’t have to have bombs. We had no war, I was the first one, 78 years, we had no war, other than I defeated ISIS. We knocked out ISIS. We took out the leading terrorists in the world, both of them. Took them out, gone. And now…,” Trump added.
Here’s a partial transcript:
HANNITY: Baghdadi, Soleimani.
TRUMP: Yes.
HANNITY: The…
TRUMP: Now — yes.
HANNITY: … leader of al Qaeda in Yemen.
TRUMP: “… worst — al-Baghdadi and Soleimani, the worst in the world, worst in the world. And you look at it and you look at what’s going on with our country, I’ll tell you, you come to Texas, this is now a war zone. And they view it as a war zone. And Mexico is doing nothing to help us. They are letting the caravans come unimpeded. I mean, they come in by the thousands. You have caravans with 25,000 people in them just walking into our country. So something has to be done,” the former president said.
“The problem you have is Arizona, you have a governor, a very liberal governor that a lot of people say shouldn’t be the governor. And in California, Newsom is doing a terrible job. He’s doing — I mean, other than talking about how wonderful it is, that’s about it. You have an outflow of people, as you know better than anybody. I saw your show with him. I said, you know, this guy is talking about California. Millions of people are coming in through California,” he said.
HANNITY: Free health care.
TRUMP: Free health care, free education, free everything.
HANNITY: Yes, and you go to jail, they let you out, they don’t turn you over to ICE.
“But not for our veterans. For our veterans, they get nothing. And for people that have been there for a long time and deserve something, citizens, they get nothing,” the former president said.
“But they get free health care, if you come illegally into our country, you get things. And this is why they are coming. The incentive is so great,” he said.
