Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump wasted no time creating controversy, as he used his campaign announcement to denounce Mexican immigrants as drug smuggling rapists, ThinkProgress' Esther Yu-Hsi Lee reports.
Trump sounded less like he wanted to govern the American people and more like he wanted to go war with the Mexican during his presidential announcement. "When do we beat Mexico at the border?" he asked. "They are not our friend, believe me."
He accused Mexico of using the United States "as a dumping ground," adding that "when Mexico sends its people, they are not sending their best."
Trump gestured at the crowd and said, "they are not sending you. They are sending people that have lots of problems, and they are bringing those problems to us. They are bringing drugs, they are bringing crime, and they're rapists."
"Some, I assume are good people. But I speak to border guards and they tell us what we are getting,” he added.
"They are not sending us the right people," Trump concluded, without defining who, in particular, he believes "the right people" to be. "It’s coming all over South and Latin America and it’s coming probably from the Middle East. But we don’t know because we have no protection and we have no competence. We don’t know what is happening and it has got to stop and it has to stop fast."
Watch the CNN video uploaded by ThinkProgress below.
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