Trump revives his attack on Latin American nations

Former president Donald Trump, in an interview that aired on Fox News on Sunday, suggested that Latin American governments were picking the citizens they didn’t want and shipping them to the US border, resurrecting a claim that was central to his 2016 campaign.

He also accused the Chinese Communist Party of orchestrating illegal immigration into the United States and said he believed China would try to interfere in the presidential election, adding that he liked President Xi Jinping “a lot.”

Asked by the interviewer, Maria Bartiromo, whether he thought “military-aged men” from China were “being directed by the Communist Party to come here,” Trump said: “I believe so.”

Referring to a recent incident in New York City in which a group of men identified by police officials as migrants from Latin America attacked police officers, Trump said: “The heads of these countries are smart. They’re not sending the people that are doing a great job and that they love in the country. They’re sending people, for the most part, that they don’t want, and they’re putting them into caravans.”

That statement echoed one of the most incendiary lines from his first campaign announcement speech in 2015: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said at the time, continuing: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

He also has repeatedly said that migrants from South and Central America are coming from “mental institutions” and jails.

Bartiromo asked Trump about Ronna McDaniel, chairperson of the Republican National Committee, with whom he has had a rocky relationship. He suggested that he would like to see her replaced. “I think she did OK initially in the RNC,” he said. “I would say right now, there’ll probably be some changes made.”