Donald Trump claimed that he invented the word “caravans” to describe groups of migrants as he dubbed them “murderers and rapers” in a rally speech in Ohio.
The former president appeared to recount a previous conversation, saying that “you won’t take these horrible convicts and other people that you released into our country illegally and you put them in caravans”.
“I came up with that term by the way,” Mr Trump claimed. “That was my term and fake news and lots of other terms we came up with.”
“Crooked Hillary, we came up with a lot of terms,” he added.
“The way Trump casually refers to immigrants as murderers and rapists isn’t new but remains notable,” journalist Aaron Rupar tweeted.
“They don’t want to have these people,” Mr Trump said, referring to migrants. “Many of them are murderers, rapers.”
In his rambling speech to an under-capacity crowd of 6,000 people in Youngstown on Saturday, Mr Trump dished out a series of humiliating jibes to mock venture capitalist JD Vance, his own pick for the state’s tight US Senate race.
The former president compared the Republican candidate to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at one point and said “JD is kissing my a**” now for support.
“This is a very important race,” Mr Trump said to a crowd at the Youngstown Covelli Centre. “This is a great person who I’ve really gotten to know.
“Yeah, he said some bad things about me, that was before he knew me and then he fell in love,” Mr Trump said.
“Remember, I said that about Kim Jong-un, he fell in love, and they said Trump is saying he fell in love – actually he did if you want to know the truth.”
The two world leaders’ relationship brought optimism for a breakthrough in denuclearisation talks between North Korea and the US after Mr Trump once said that he and Mr Kim “fell in love”. They met three times and exchanged letters and envoys on many occasions since 2018, although talks ultimately bore little fruit before Mr Trump was voted out in 2020.
Mr Trump was referring to Mr Vance’s reported remarks from six years ago, when the candidate had called Mr Trump “America’s Hitler”.
The venture capitalist and Hillbilly Elegy author said at the time: “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical a**hole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad … or that he’s America’s Hitler,” according to his former Yale Law School roommate.
