A couple of weeks ago, Donald Trump told a long and rambling hypothetical story about an electric boat that’s sinking, a nearby shark, and the threat of electrocution. It was, by any fair measure, deeply strange, even by the former president’s standards — which made it all the more notable when the Republican returned to the subject over the weekend.
In fact, during an appearance at a Faith & Freedom Coalition event on Saturday, the presumptive GOP nominee told the whole story all over again, telling his far-right audience how “smart” it was. He added, “It’s actually not crazy.”
And while I’m inclined to let people draw their own conclusions about whether the bizarre boat/batter/shark tale is “crazy” or not, this was not the most jaw-dropping part of Trump’s remarks. As The New York Times reported, the Republican candidate also told his evangelical audience that he pitched starting a league for migrants to fight one another for sport.
Appearing at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s conference in Washington on Saturday, Mr. Trump described migrants with the dehumanizing terms he often uses to refer to them, saying they were “tough,” “come from prisons” and are “nasty, mean.” Mr. Trump then said that he had suggested to Dana White, an ally of the former president’s who is the chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, “Why don’t you set up a migrant league of fighters?”
In fact, the former president seemed quite animated on the subject.
Referring to Dana White, Trump told the audience, “I said, ‘Dana, I have an idea. Why don’t you set up a migrant league of fighters and have your regular league of fighters, and then you have the champion of your league — these are the greatest fighters in the world — fight the champion of the migrants.’ I think the migrant guy might win, that’s how tough they are. He didn’t like that idea too much, but actually, it’s not the worst idea I’ve ever had. No, it’s, these are tough people, these people are tough, and they’re nasty, mean.”
White later confirmed that Trump did, in fact, present the idea to him privately.
Apparently pleased with the crowd’s reaction in Washington, D.C., the Republican spoke at a rally in Philadelphia hours later, at which point he pitched the identical idea.
To be sure, as Trump’s latest campaign advances, his anti-immigrant messaging has hardly been subtle. We are, after all, talking about a White House hopeful who’s complained about migrants “poisoning the blood of our country“ — echoing Adolph Hitler in the process — and who’s publicly declared that migrants are “not humans.”
But raising the prospect of putting migrants into a ring to fight for Americans’ entertainment is, among other things, new.
Part of what made this pitch so extraordinary is the degree to which it encapsulates a variety of Trump’s worst qualities. In a single idea, the former president managed to combine his affinity for violence, his contempt for migrants, his embrace of demagoguery, and his penchant for horrible business proposals. That’s not an easy thing to do in 41 seconds, but he managed to pull it off.
But watching the candidate sell his idea, I found myself dwelling on a related question: Who thinks like this?
Trump sees desperate people trying to start a new life in the United States, and it occurs to him that it might be worthwhile to put gloves on them, throw them into a ring, and allow spectators to watch them fight for sport.
It’s offensive, certainly, but it also reflects a rather twisted perspective.
A Biden campaign spokesperson said in a statement, “Trump’s incoherent, unhinged tirade showed voters in his own words that he is a threat to our freedoms and is too dangerous to be let anywhere near the White House again.”