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Former President Donald Trump mused that the UFC should start a migrant fight club and train asylum seekers and illegal immigrants to fight because migrants are “tough, mean and nasty.”
During two speeches on Saturday — one before a gathering of Christian conservatives and then later at a rally in Philadelphia — Trump floated that concept while recounting how he brought it to Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White.
“These people are tough. They’re so tough,” Trump said to the conservative Christians at a Faith & Freedom Coalition in Washington, DC.
“I said, ‘Dana I have an idea. Why don’t you set up a migrant league of fighters and have your regular league fighters. And then you have the champion of your league — these are the greatest fighters in the world — fight the champion of the migrants.’”
Audience members were heard laughing as Trump explained his conversation with White about a migrant fight league.
“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 had,” Trump quipped. “These people are tough and they’re nasty, mean.”
Trump, 78, has long been a fan of the UFC and has visited several fights during his campaign, including earlier this month in New Jersey, for UFC 302, just after his guilty finding in the hush money case.
White later confirmed to reporters during a presser in Saudi Arabia that Trump conferred with him about the migrant fight club concept.
“I saw everybody going crazy online. But yeah, he did say it,” White later said to reporters, stressing it was “a joke.”
Trump spoke to the crowd for about an hour and a half during the conference located at the Washington Hilton. Later he stumped before a boisterous crowd in Philadelphia and recounted the tale.
“I said, Dana, Dana, I have an idea for you to make a lot of money,” Trump recalled. “You’re going to go and start a new Migrant Fight League. … Only migrants. And then at the end of the year, the champion migrant is going to fight your champion. And I hate to tell you, Dana, I think the migrant might win. That’s how tough they are.”
“When I return to the White House, we will stop the plunder, rape, slaughter, and destruction of our American suburbs, cities, and towns,” Trump later pledged.
The 45th president has long billed himself as a hardliner on illegal immigration, and made it a marquee issue during his 2016 bid with his clarion call to “build the wall.”
Recently, Trump has rankled some immigration hawks with his suggestion that foreign students who graduate from American universities and colleges should “get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card.”
In the past, he has called for the US to move more in the direction of a “merit-based” immigration system.
Simultaneously, Trump has taken on a hardline position of deporting all illegal immigrations currently residing within the US.
He has also vexed advocates of a more lenient approach with incendiary rhetoric on illegal immigrants, previously likening them to “vermin” and warning that they are “poisoning the blood” of the country.
Additionally Trump is prepping for a cage-match of his own later this week when he will square off against President Biden for the first presidential debate of the 2024 general election season on Thursday in Atlanta.