Donald Trump Calls America a “Garbage Can” of Undocumented Immigrants in Racist—Even for Him—Campaign Rally

A “shining city on a hill.” An “exceptional,” “great nation.” “The land of second chance.” “A brilliant diversity spreads like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.” These are just some of the ways former presidents have described America over the years. And then there’s Donald Trump.

On Thursday at a rally in Arizona, the ex-president—who you might be surprised to hear would like to be president again—described the country as a “garbage can,” the contents of which, according to him, are undocumented immigrants. While the president has long spoken of people who weren’t born in America, and anyone he disagrees with, in the most dehumanizing terms possible, his remarks on Thursday were somehow disturbing even for him.

“A lot of people coming out of the Congo,” Trump told the crowd in Tempe. “Not just South America, they’re coming from 181 countries as of yesterday. We’re a dumping ground, we’re like a garbage can for the world. That’s what’s happened, we’re like a garbage can. You know that’s the first time I’ve ever said that…first time I’ve ever said ‘garbage can,’ but you know what? It’s a very accurate description.”

Since he announced his first run for office in 2015, during a speech in which he described Mexican people as bringing “drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists,” Trump has talked about immigrants—usually those of the undocumented variety, though he’s clearly no fan of legal ones either—using racist, stomach-churning rhetoric. Just some of that rhetoric has included claiming immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” and dubbing them “animals” who have “wrecked” America. More recently, he’s taken to spreading dangerous lies that Haitian immigrants are eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio.

Of course, this language is not just reserved for people from other countries, but anyone Trump has defined as one of his enemies. On Thursday, he:

• Called Joe Biden “a stupid fool”
• Called Nancy Pelosi “crazy as a bedbug”
• Dubbed Gavin Newsom “the worst”
• Accused Kamala Harris of “gross incompetence”
• Called journalists “the enemy of the people”

The same day, in an apparent attempt to really drive home the idea that he would govern like a “fascist” in a second term, Trump called into a town hall JD Vance was doing on NewsNation to ask, in the third person, “How brilliant is Donald J. Trump?” Vance, who has previously described Trump as “America’s Hitler,” responded, “Sir, of course, you’re very brilliant.”

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