Donald Trump spoke at a town hall on Univision on Wednesday night and showed yet again that he is unwilling to tell the truth about immigrants and immigration and unable to hide his racism and xenophobia. Because he came face-to-face with Latinos who were not necessarily members of his cult, he was better-behaved than usual. He did not accuse anyone there of being evil or poisoning the nation’s blood.
But Trump did lie. He repeated many of the hate-mongering falsehoods he has told about immigrants and the border for years.
We want to congratulate and thank the attendees who fearlessly confronted Trump with direct, simple questions. We are especially grateful to Jorge Velázquez, a California farmworker, who asked Trump a simple question that the country’s most powerful and “savvy” journalists would have never thought to ask: After Trump completes his mass deportations of millions of immigrants — who will do their work?
Here is the question and Trump’s complete response. Don’t expect to find Trump’s answer — it’s not there. He completely ducked the question, and buried his questioner in a mudslide of lies — because that is what he does.
We have added the annotation to Trump’s words using the following color codes as a fact-check and reader service.
1. FALSE
2. FALSE PLUS SELF-CONGRATULATORY BULLSHIT
3. FALSE PLUS RACIST AND FEAR-MONGERING
4. BATSHIT-CRAZY FALSE
5. FALSE PLUS HE’S PROJECTING
6. TRUE BUT HE DOESN’T BELIEVE A WORD OF IT
VELÁZQUEZ: For many years, I have worked with these hands, hunched over, picking strawberries and cutting broccoli. This tough job is mainly done by undocumented people. If you deport these people, who would do that job and what price would we pay for food?
TRUMP: “So, the problem we have is, we had people coming in under my administration and they were coming in legally. Coming in through a system we had, which was great. Because I’m the best thing that ever happened to farmers — you know that. I was great. You know, farmers are doing very badly right now, very, very badly under this administration.“
“Under my administration, farmers did very well. We have to have a lot of people come into our country. We just want them to come in legally, through a system. Because they’ve released hundreds of thousands of people that are murderers, drug dealers, terrorists. They’re coming in totally — nobody knows who they are, where they come from, and the people that are most against it are the Hispanic people. They are totally against it, what’s happened“
“The other thing I can say is that a lot of the jobs that you have and that other people have are being taken by these people that are coming in. And the African-American population and the Hispanic population in particular are losing jobs now because millions of people are coming in. So they’re coming in, but they’re also coming in largely — tremendous numbers coming in out of mental institutions; they’re emptying out mental institutions, they’re emptying out insane asylums, that’s a step above a mental institution — worse, bigger, bigger problems, bigger problem people. They’re emptying out jails, jails are being let into our country from Venezuela, but not just South America, from all over the world, they’re being let in. From jails, from — nobody’s ever seen anything like it. The jail population throughout the world has come way down, and it’s all coming into the United States of America.”
“So we want workers, and we want them to come in, but they have to come in legally. They have to love our country. They have to love you, love our people. The problem with this administration is they’ve totally lost control. It’s the worst President and the worst Vice President that we’ve ever had in this country. What they have done to our country in terms of hurting it.”
“Our farmers, by the way, are dying. They haven’t had anything so bad in 25 years. Four years ago, our farmers, including you, were making a lot of money. They were doing great. Now they’re absolutely dying. We’re gonna turn it around.”
But we want people to come in. But we don’t want murderers. So it was just announced that — last month, by the Border Patrol, that under Biden and Harris, they allowed 13,099 convicted murders, people in jail, to come into our country. They released them from jail into our population. And nobody wants that. And that doesn’t include the terrorists and all of the others. The gang members, MS-13 gang members and other gang members. We have to have people that are great people come into our country. But we do want ’em in, and I want ’em in even more than you do. And we’re going to make it so that people can come into our country legally.
“Thank you. Good question, thank you.“