Donald Trump has apparently considered the possibility that he might lose the 2024 election—and, if he does, his plans for the future involve a one-way ticket to Venezuela.
Speaking to Elon Musk on Monday, the former president told the X owner, “If something happens with this election, which would be a horror show, we’ll meet the next time in Venezuela, because it’ll be a far safer place to meet than our country. So you and I will go and we’ll have a meeting and dinner in Venezuela.”
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“Their crime rate is coming down and our crime rate is going through the roof,” Trump continued. “And it’s so simple. And you haven’t seen anything yet, because these people have come into our country and they’re just getting acclimated.” He added that Venezuela has cleared out “about 70% of their really bad people,” suggesting that said “really bad people” are now in the US. “Their jails are about 50%, put into the United States,” he said. “Same with other countries, over 30%. Some are at 50%. They’re all different. But the bottom line is they’re all going to be 100%. Why wouldn’t you put 100% of it?”
Not surprisingly, Trump’s argument that Venezuela—which the State Department warns Americans not to travel to—will be safer than the US under Kamala Harris is, of course, not actually based on facts. For one thing, FBI data shows that violent crime is down significantly in the US. For another, Venezuela is widely considered to be dictatorship, where at least 1,260 people have been arbitrarily detained following last month’s presidential election, with nearly two dozen killed, according to advocacy groups. Meanwhile, Roberto Briceño-León, founder of the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, told Factcheck.org in June that there was zero evidence that Venezuela is sending its criminals to the US, no matter how many times Trump says it. “We have no evidence that the Venezuelan government is emptying the prisons or mental hospitals to send them out of the country, whether to the USA or any other country,” he told the outlet.
Elsewhere in Trump’s interview with Musk, the former president vowed, if reelected, to preside over the “largest deportation” in history, and, in a uniquely bizarre moment, said Harris looked like the “most beautiful actress ever to live” on a recent illustrated cover of Time. “It was a drawing, and actually, she looked very much like a great first lady, Melania,” he added.
