Trump laughs, jokes after follower at rally suggests to 'shoot' migrants at the border
President Donald Trump, during an evening rally in Florida on Wednesday, May 8, appeared to joke with one of his supporters about the possibility of shooting migrants at the US-Mexico border. The incident occurred when the president was deriding migrants and asylum seekers arriving at the border for refuge, and ridiculing them for carrying their home countries' flags as they headed to the US.
Trump, during the rally in Panama City Beach, said: "They want to fly the flag of Guatemala and Honduras and El Salvador right into our border. Save that flag, we love our country. We love our country, but we're afraid of it for purposes of getting into the United States, we're afraid of our country."
The Republican leader then talked about how his proposed border wall between the US and Mexico "would stop" migrants from crossing into the US. He also emphasized that using "weapons" on migrants is not an option despite "other countries" using them.
"I mean, when you have 15,000 people marching up and you have hundreds and hundreds of people and you have two or three border security people that are brave and great and don't forget, we don't let them and we can't let them use weapons," Trump said. "We can't. Other countries do. We can't. I would never do that. But, how do you stop these people? You can't."
A person from the crowd, at this moment, can be heard shouting: "Shoot 'em!" as other rally members laugh and cheer at the remark.
Trump catches on the remark and appears to laugh before jokingly saying: "That's only in the Panhandle you can get away with that statement," as the crowd continues to cheer. "Only in the Panhandle!"
"It's a tough situation," the president said after. "But, if they change the loopholes, we'll have it perfectly and when the wall is finished, it's gonna be great."
The president in his previous comments seemed to lament that the military troops his administration deployed to the border cannot be more "rough" with migrants arriving at the border.
Trump, while talking to reporters in Texas last month, had said that they should not forget that the US military troops "can't act like a military would act... Because if they got a little rough, everybody would go crazy."
On Wednesday, US border officials speaking at a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Border Security and Immigration hearing said that the number of people taken into US custody after trying to cross the border has topped 100,000 for the second consecutive month in April.