“That’s the danger of this president: he’s not looking out for the safety and security of Americans, he’s looking out for his own personal entertainment.”
WASHINGTON – Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) joined CNN’s Jake Tapper on State of the Union to call out Trump’s reckless use of ICE, DHS funding, and the President’s threats to take over Greenland.
Watch the full interview here and read excerpts from the conversation below:
On the Pentagon’s reported plans to deploy active-duty soldiers to Minnesota:
“This is what the president has wanted the whole time. There’s no reason for us to even have this many ICE agents running around Minnesota. The president threw them into this very volatile area in order for them to create this environment, because he thinks the military is his toy that he could just use at any time. He wants nothing more than to be able to use them and deploy them to these blue cities to intimidate. Not because it’s going to bring any more safety – as a matter of fact, it will just cause more harm than any kind of safety – but that way he could just say that he did it. That’s the danger of this president: he’s not looking out for the safety and security of Americans, he’s looking out for his own personal entertainment, and he doesn’t care who gets hurt in the in the process of it.”
On reforming ICE:
“I think ICE needs to be totally torn down. It has to be created in the image of what people want. And what does that look like? From my experience running in Arizona – in a very hard, hard state when it comes to immigration and immigration issues – people want immigration enforcement that goes after criminals and focuses on criminals, and immigration enforcement [that] is actually focused on security, not the goon squad that has come from Stephen Miller and Donald Trump. One that issues warrants, one that doesn’t have people mask and acting like they’re a third world police force. What we’re seeing right now is not what we want from ICE, and we can create and have a force that’s actually focused on immigration and on security, and not this type of intimidation that’s happening right now.”
On the DHS funding bill:
“Again, we want a security force that is focused on targeting and deporting criminals. What they’re doing right now is none of that. […] You have men with very little training shooting U.S. citizens. This is not at all what we need. I’m certainly not going to fund something of that nature if it’s only going to cause more problems and more harm and less security for Americans and everyday people that are just trying to live their lives.”
“We cannot keep funding these types of goon squads that are just spreading throughout the whole country just to enforce some weird policy position that Stephen Miller has where he thinks that we have to punish blue cities.”
On what the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland think of Trump’s threats to take over Greenland:
“They’re shocked and they’re trying to find reason within what’s happening here. I try to explain to them there is no reasoning, the president just wants to have a legacy piece where he gets to claim that he brought in this big chunk of land that he sees on the map – even though it’s a distorted map. He’s willing to ruin our whole foreign policy, all of our alliances, our economy, just so he could get what he wants. This man is doing everything for himself and nothing for us.”
“Right now, we can’t even afford health insurance for U.S. citizens, and we’re talking about buying land.”
“Let me just say one more time, Denmark, the Kingdom of Denmark and Greenland said, ‘we will give you everything you want short of giving you possession of our land.’ You want more bases, you get more bases. You want to put more people. you get it. The idea that we’re going to waste money for everything we want is the dumbest decision we can make. The only person who can make a decision this dumb is someone that would actually let a casino go under. And guess who’s president right now?”