In phone rally, Trump says Biden would tear down wall
In a telephone town hall targeted to Arizona voters Saturday, President Donald Trump touted his work on securing the border with Mexico and warned of dire consequences for the state should he lose the November election to former Vice President Joe Biden.
Trump, in the phone call, said that, if elected, Biden would tear down the reinforced fencing his administration has constructed.
“I understand he wants to take down the wall,” Trump said during the 25minute call. “We’re spending a lot of money building the finest of its kind, and Biden wants to rip it down. That’s what I heard.”
Biden, in campaign policy statements, has said that he would not fund further construction of a border wall. A campaign spokesman said Saturday in an email that Biden would make “smart” investments in border security.
However, Trump, in a June interview with KSAZ-TV, Channel 10, said he thought Biden, if elected, would complete the wall because it was proving so popular.
Trump said on Saturday that he wished he was holding an in-person rally in Arizona but could not because of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We loved our rallies in Arizona and everyplace else,” he said. He vowed to return to the state when he could.
Trump said some states led by Democratic governors had policies that “make it impossible to do a rally anyway. They say you can’t do political rallies.”
Trump was not specific about what states he was talking about. Although states have policies restricting the size of gatherings because of public health concerns, none specifically ban political rallies.
Trump did visit Arizona in June to deliver a speech inside a north Phoenix church. Many in the crowd were not wearing masks despite a city ordinance that mandated the wearing of facial coverings.
Trump said that Saturday’s telephone town hall had “big numbers” of people on the line. The Trump campaign did not immediately return an email asking how many people participated in the call.
Trump said that “people work so hard to live in a certain community. We shouldn’t be destroying that community.”
Concerns about the communities cut across racial and economic lines, the president said.