Former President Donald Trump spoke at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Tuesday and warned that the country would face a “bloodbath” from migrant crime, and that the U.S. would end if he is not elected in November.
Trump’s comments were made while in front of law enforcement officers and mostly blamed migrants, whom he called “animals,” for America’s problems. He also suggested that adversarial countries like China were sending only “military age” men across the border, hinting at some kind of secret invasion.
Trump then escalated the fear-mongering by stating, “If we don’t win on November 5th, I think our country is going to cease to exist. It could be the last election we ever have. I actually mean that. We don’t win, I think this could be the last election we ever have. That’s where our country’s going.”
Trump: If we don’t win on November 5th, I think our country is going to cease to exist. It could be the last election we ever have. I actually mean that. If we don’t win, I think this could be the last election we ever have pic.twitter.com/Puup9bB9b7
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 2, 2024
Trump also talked about recent victims incidents of what he referred to as “Biden migrant crime” and promised that it wouldn’t happen under his leadership.
MSNBC’s Katy Tur inquired of NBC News reporter Vaughn Hillyard about the political implications of this messaging this election cycle, considering that Trump had urged Republicans to block the recent bill to strengthen border security.
“This is a tactic we’ve seen from Donald Trump previously. The question is, will it be successful this time? Katy, in July of 2015, you and I were in Phoenix, Arizona, at his first MAGA rally. And one of the speakers at that event in July of 2015 was the father of someone who was killed by an undocumented immigrant,” Vaugh replied, adding:
Donald Trump is using these anecdotal stories to try to motivate the base and support to rally around him. I can even go back to a past job of mine. Back in 2010, Steve King, the former congressman from Iowa, had made a claim that 9,000 Americans were killed annually by undocumented immigrants.
This is something that Americans have heard, this sort of severe immigration rhetoric for a long time. But frankly, the data does not bear out the fact that undocumented immigrants kill Americans at any greater rate than, legal Americans, if you will. But that is the difficult part here, and especially when you’re dealing with devastating, tragic stories like Laken Riley’s in Georgia, and Donald Trump has made it clear that he is going to try to politically use those tragedies for the political gain.
Watch the clip above via MSNBC.
