The southern border is the “top” issue, former President Donald Trump told Tucker Carlson in an interview which served as counter-programming to the first Republican primary debate.

“If you’re elected president again, what’s your top, your number one priority? You when you ran last time, you said, ‘I will build a wall.’ This time, your bottom line, top promise.”

“So you can do numerous things at the same time, of course, but let’s say number one is a border and taking hundreds of thousands of criminals that have been allowed into our country and getting them out and bringing them back to their country,” Trump said, revealing his top issue, should he take the White House again.

Trump said migrants are coming from many places.

“Last month, we had 149 countries represented,” Trump said. “Think of it. We had 149 countries represented, Tucker, from places that many people never even heard of coming into our country. And they’re coming in from mental institutions, and they’re coming in from prisons, they’re emptying out their prisons all over South America,” Trump said, laying out the dangers that open border policies pose to Americans.

“They’re emptying out their mental institutions. Terrorists are pouring into our country. We have no idea. I had the strongest border in the history of our country, and I built almost 500 miles of wall,” he said. “You know, they’d like to say, ‘Oh, was it less?’ No. I built 500 miles. In fact, if your check with the authorities on the border, we built almost 500 miles of wall. And I had another 200 that I was going to build, you know — it’s like water, it seeps. And we’re going to build another 200. We built it. It was all set to go. All they had to do was install it, it would have taken three weeks. And that’s when I found out, I said, ‘I think these people actually want open borders,'” Trump said.

“The first thing I would do would be, I would seal up the border good and tight, except for people that want to come in legally,”
Trump promised.

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