Former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump says he plans to complete the “largest deportation in American history” if re-elected in 2024.
Key points:
- Donald Trump told a rally he would end “illegal alien gang violence”
- Mr Trump bemoaned the soaring US stock market as making “rich people richer”
- He described Joe Biden as the “most incompetent and most corrupt president in the history of our country”
Speaking at a rally in Reno, Nevada, Mr Trump also called US President Joe Biden a “low-IQ individual” and the “worst, most incompetent and most corrupt president” in the history of the United States.
One day earlier, the former president said that undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country”, during a campaign event in New Hampshire where he railed against the record number of migrants attempting to cross the US border illegally.
In Nevada, Mr Trump doubled down on his pledge to be tough on immigration.
“Given the unprecedented millions of Biden illegal aliens who are invading our country, it is only common sense that when I’m re-elected, we will begin — and we have no choice — the largest deportation operation in American history,” he said.
“We will have to.
“On my first day back in the White House, I will terminate every open-borders policy of the Biden administration and I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act to remove all known or suspected gang members, drug dealers or cartel members from the United States, ending the scourge of illegal alien gang violence once and for all.”
Mr Trump is a frontrunner to be the Republican candidate for the third consecutive election, after defeating Hillary Clinton in 2016 and losing to Mr Biden in 2020.
During his rally in Nevada, Mr Trump took aim at the president, who he called the “most incompetent and most corrupt president in the history of our country”.
Mr Trump also bemoaned the soaring US stock market, saying it only makes “rich people richer”.
He predicted three years ago that if Democratic Mr Biden won the White House in 2020 markets would crash
The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a record high last week, topping 37,000 and surpassing the previous record set in 2022.
In a 2020 debate with Mr Biden, Mr Trump said that if Mr Biden won the election, “the stock market will crash”.
Mr Biden last week mocked him over the prediction.
Mr Trump often took credit for a rising stock market when he was president between 2017 and 2021.
In an attempt to give a populist and anti-Biden twist on the new record stock market high, Mr Trump, a self-described billionaire, told supporters in Nevada: “The stock market is making rich people richer.”
“Biden’s inflation catastrophe is demolishing your savings and ravaging your dreams,” Mr Trump said.
“We are a nation whose economy is collapsing into a cesspool.”
The Republican primary cycle begins on January 15 in Iowa, starting the nomination process.
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Reuters/ABC