Former President Donald Trump said during a Fox News interview on Saturday night that he plans to visit the U.S. southern border in the next couple of weeks amid the crisis that has erupted under President Joe Biden.
Trump made the remarks during an interview with Judge Jeanine Pirro on “Justice with Judge Jeanine,” saying that the Border Patrol and ICE wanted him to go.
“Well, a lot of people want me to,” Trump said. “The Border Patrol and all of the people of ICE, they want me there. They’ve asked me to go. And I really sort of feel I owe it to them. They’re great people.”
“Thousands and thousands of people are coming up right now as we speak,” he added. “And you’re going to have millions of people pouring into our country. And it’s going to destroy our country. I don’t know what they’re doing. And they don’t know what they’re doing. It’s a very, very dangerous situation. I’d love not to be involved. Somebody else is supposed to be doing it.”
Trump said that the plan is to go sometime over “the next couple of weeks,” although he said that he was not in a rush to go to the border and he was not necessarily trying to go there before Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris visit the border. Trump repeatedly praised the president of Mexico during the interview, saying that he had a good relationship with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and that Obrador helped the U.S. secure the border during the Trump presidency.
Trump said that what the Biden administration was doing was “horrible” for the U.S. and that “they’re going to destroy our country.”
WATCH:
Former President Donald Trump joined me with reaction to my #OpeningStatement and revealed when he might visit the southern border. Take a look: pic.twitter.com/euE1ocEBu3
— Jeanine Pirro (@JudgeJeanine) March 28, 2021
TRANSCRIPT:
JEANINE PIRRO, FOX NEWS HOST: But first, joining me right now, former President of the United States Donald Trump.
President Trump, thank you so much for being with us. I appreciate your time. Let’s get right to it. The rumor is that you’re going to go to the border yourself. When do you plan to do that?
DONALD TRUMP, 45TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, a lot of people want me to. The Border Patrol and all of the people of ICE, they want me there. They’ve asked me to go. And I really sort of feel I owe it to them. They’re great people. They’re doing an incredible job. It’s impossible now with what they’ve done to stay in Mexico, should have been left.
And now they stay in the United States. And by the way, stay in and never leave. Thousands and thousands of people are coming up right now as we speak. And you’re going to have millions of people pouring into our country. And it’s going to destroy our country. I don’t know what they’re doing. And they don’t know what they’re doing.
It’s a very, very dangerous situation. I’d love not to be involved. Somebody else is supposed to be doing it.
PIRRO: Well, Mr. President when do you think that you would go? When do you think you would go to the border?
TRUMP: Well, I’d say over the next couple of weeks — over the next couple of weeks. The Border Patrol wants me to go. Probably over the next couple of weeks. I don’t think there’s a rush for me to go. He’s supposed to go and make the decision, a very, very bad decision with stay in Mexico where he ended that.
And it’s incredible. They’re not — we’re not getting along with Mexico any longer. You have a great president of Mexico who was fantastic to me. Soldiers on our border, 28,000 soldiers stopped people from coming in.
You know, one of the big things, not only people, but drugs are pouring in at a number that we’ve never seen before now. We stopped it largely. And, you know, we were — the wall is just a few weeks away from being completed. He didn’t want to complete it. It took two and a half years to start because the Congress, the Democrats in Congress, Pelosi and everybody sued us 11 different times.
So after we won all the lawsuits…
PIRRO: I recall.
TRUMP: … they started, they should finish the wall, number one. And they should have the stay-in policy reinserted, because if you don’t have that, this is going to be a disaster.
PIRRO: They’re not going to do that, Mr. President. And the truth is that the president and the vice president have no public plans to visit the border. And…
TRUMP: Terrible.
PIRRO: … do you suspect that you will get there before they do?
TRUMP: Well, I’m not looking to have a race. I’m looking to get a problem solved. This is going to destroy our country. We have — you have potentially millions of people coming up over a fairly short period of time. And these are people that in a large way are not people that we want in our country. You have criminals coming up. You have murderers, rapists, drug dealers coming up.
Because these countries, and I get along very well with the heads of every one of the countries, whether it’s Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador, or Mexico, but, you know, they’re not looking to have their finest people leave their country. But they don’t mind if MS-13 leaves their country and…
PIRRO: Yes, but, Mr. President…
TRUMP: Yes.
PIRRO: But, Mr. President, we have no way to vet or identify who these people are. What should the administration be doing? And by the way, President Obrador, by the way, criticized the Biden administration and said…
TRUMP: Good.
PIRRO: … you know, that you would engage and had a process together where you held them in Mexico. But, you know, now the Biden administration has ended all of that. Why would they do that?
TRUMP: Well, we had a great process. And with the president of Mexico, who is a terrific guy and a friend of mine, we had a great process. And it was a strong process. And, frankly, they weren’t coming in to Mexico by the time we really got it going because they weren’t coming in at Mexico’s southern border. They weren’t coming in because they knew they couldn’t come into the United States.
So you didn’t have the problems. Now once they say, we’re letting you in, you’re going to have, and they already have — if you take a look at the over-top shots or the airplane shots, we already have thousands and thousands of people marching up to our border. And we don’t know who those people are. And they let them in.
PIRRO: Right.
TRUMP: And then there’s just nothing you can do. Once they’re here, you’re not going to get them out. It’s a very serious problem…
PIRRO: Well, you know…
TRUMP: …and getting worse.
PIRRO: Clearly. Susan Collins was at the border, Senator Susan Collins. And she said that they were actually taunting her, that — from across the border. And Senator Ted Cruz said stuff very similar about what was going on at the border. They were stunned. And yet — and yet the Biden administration doesn’t seem to even want to go there or resolve the problem.
They cut all the funding for the wall.
What is going to happen with those contracts of the — you know, for the wall, and the subterranean connections and the likes? If Biden stops all those contracts, do we still pay for them?
TRUMP: We paid for it already. The contracts are completed. The wall should be completed by now if he let — he stopped it almost at his first day. He stopped construction of the wall.
PIRRO: Yeah.
TRUMP: And this is a wall that it was — look, we built almost 500 miles of wall, and it’s new wall. You know, they like to say it’s renovated wall. We took the wall down and we built new walls.
So, when we take the wall down and we build new wall, they like to say it’s a renovation and stuff. This is new, really the top of the line. It’s technological — technologically advanced like you wouldn’t believe, with the wires. And we’re hooked up with drones. We’re hooked up for everything. And this is great stuff.
And they stopped construction. And so we have some open areas. We had to leave certain areas to get everything back in as we completed it. And they didn’t finish it up. It was just a very simple thing to do. It would have taken a very short period of time and so you have gaps.
Now, with — they cover the gaps easily with the Border Patrol. But you don’t even have to do that. They should finish the wall immediately and that has to be number one.
Stay in Mexico policy has to get reenacted, which isn’t that easy anymore because now, Mexico is angry at us. Now, the other countries are not respecting us.
And now, you can go a step even further —
PIRRO: Right.
TRUMP: — and bigger. China has never spoken to me the way they spoke to our representatives a week ago.
PIRRO: Right.
TRUMP: I’ve never seen anything like it.
And I just heard on your show and other shows, and I read constantly what’s going on with North Korea, and now, the United States wants China’s help with North Korea. But we’re not getting along with China and — for stupid reasons. I’ve never seen — I’ve never seen China disrespect this country like they did last week.
PIRRO: All right. Well, Mr. President, I know that your time is valuable. I just want to get a sense — do you think you go next week or the week after?
TRUMP: Well, I don’t want to set a schedule, but over the next few weeks, I guess I’ll go. And I’m not sure that I really should do it, Jeanine, other than the fact that I have such respect for the Border Patrol and for ICE. And these people —
PIRRO: They’re wonderful.
TRUMP: — they’re dying for leadership. There’s nothing. There’s no leadership.
You have to see the squalor, the children and, frankly, people that have come in to the country when you look at what’s happening, the dirt and the filth of those places. That’s why they’re not letting the press in.
PIRRO: It’s very sad.
TRUMP: And, frankly, if that were me —
PIRRO: It’s very sad.
TRUMP: — the press would be going crazy. It’s a very dangerous situation.
PIRRO: They would.
TRUMP: It’s horrible for our country.
PIRRO: All right.
TRUMP: They’re going to destroy our country.
PIRRO: All right. President Trump, thank you so much for being with us. I know your time is valuable. Thank you, Mr. President.
TRUMP: Thank you very much, Jeanine.