President Donald Trump stunned people around the world Thursday afternoon by claiming there’s a high level of rape by people – mostly Hondurans, he has said – making an annual pilgrimage via caravan through Central America into Mexico. Reports of rapes associated with people making the trek do not exist.
“Remember my opening remarks at Trump Tower,” Trump said, referring to the infamous launch of his presidential campaign. “Everybody said, ‘Oh, he was so tough.’ And I used the word ‘rape,'” Trump noted.
“And yesterday it came out where, this journey coming up, women are raped at levels that nobody has ever seen before. They don’t want to mention that. So we have to change our laws, and the Democrats, what they’re doing, it’s insanity.”
Buzzfeed’s national security correspondent for immigration, Adolfo Flores, who – as ThinkProgress reports, “has been embedded with the caravan for nearly two weeks, noted on Thursday, ‘I’ve been with the caravan for 12 days and haven’t seen or heard of anyone being ‘raped at levels that nobody has ever seen before.'”
Also astonishing: Trump made his remarks at a tax roundtable.
There’s been massive outrage: