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Donald Trump criticises Nayib Bukele at GOP convention

Donald Trump speaks at the Republican National Convention on 18 July. Credit: Getty

July 19, 2024 - 9:15pm

Donald Trump accused El Salvador President Nayib Bukele of solving his country’s crime problem by sending criminals to the US during his speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday.

Bukele’s crackdown on gang activity, which involved the imprisonment of about 75,000 alleged gang members in 2022, has been credited with transforming the continent’s murder capital into one of the safest countries in Latin America, and he’s become an icon for the American Right in the process. Yet Trump argued yesterday that Bukele’s popularity in the US is unmerited, and suggested he was to blame for migrant-related crime.

El Salvador’s President is “sending all of his criminals, his drug dealers, his people that are in jails, he’s sending them all to the United States,” Trump said. “He’s trying to convince everybody what a wonderful job he does in running the country. Well, he doesn’t do a wonderful job.”

Bukele took office in June 2019, with his state of emergency and mass imprisonment programme beginning in March 2022. US Border Patrol’s annual encounters of single Salvadorean adults at the southern border have fluctuated since Bukele took office, hitting a low of 9,000 in 2020 amid a Covid-related border crackdown and a high of 51,000 in 2022. This was considerably higher than the 10,000-30,000 annual encounters in the three years preceding Bukele’s presidency.

The history of migration between the US and El Salvador is particularly fraught. The MS-13 gang was formed as a direct result of the migration of men, often trained in guerilla warfare, from El Salvador to the US during the country’s civil war. The gang engages in ritualistic murders in the US, not only of gang members but of randomly selected civilians including teenage girls.

Bukele has previously positioned himself as an ally of the former US president, and criticised his recent criminal prosecution. “Just imagine if this happened in any other country, where a government arrested the main opposition candidate,” he said following Trump’s arrest. “The United States’ ability to use ‘democracy’ as foreign policy is gone.”

Following Trump’s Thursday speech, Bukele wrote only a brief response online: “Taking the high road.”


is UnHerd’s US correspondent.

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Josef Švejk
Josef Švejk
1 month ago

Being besties with the Donald is a Sisyphean task.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
1 month ago
Reply to  Josef Švejk

Is it ever. Even if it’s true, you don’t trash the gut in public. This is the Trump I can’t stand.

TinaKay Weidner
TinaKay Weidner
1 month ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Your all losers. Wow what a trip lol I’m sure u know Donald and how he is to his friends right Heck Naw your full of it you just can’t handle the ONLY ONE STANDING UP LIKE UP UP TO STAND UP FOR THIS COUNTRY DONT U KNOW HOW BAD THINGS ARE WHO ARE U TO TALK CRAP LIKE U KNOW HIM HES THE BEST PRESIDENT WE’VE HAD SO FAR HE ACTUALLY CARED ABOUT HIS PEOPLE HECK GAS PRICES WERE AWESOME! WE ALL HAD LIL MONEY EVEN AFTER PUTTING GAS IN OUR VEHICLES WE STILL HAD SOME TO SPEND PRICES ARE HORRIBLE & Hummm I BET U THINK THE 2020 ELECTION WASNT STOLLEN TO RIGHT? WELL THE ELECTION WAS 4 A FACT STOLLEN WANT PROOF THEN UVE GOT TO SEE (2000 MULES)←PLEASE DO WATCH THIS DOCUMENTARY IF U THINK THE 2020 ELECTION WAS NOT STOLLEN
I DARE YOU THEN AFTER U SEE THE UNDENIABLE TRUE FACTS THAT TOOK PLACE

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
1 month ago

All caps – and unhinged to boot. Good stuff

TinaKay Weidner
TinaKay Weidner
1 month ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

He really did load up buses of them ms13 gang members and took them to our border he really did there’s a video of it banned.video ✓it out if you do on the left side u can scroll down to see all the different peoples lil videos to watch goto Greg Reece’s videos there all very short and STR8 TO THE POINT ALL FACTS HE SHOWS THE PROOF AS U WATCH VERY INTERESTING VIDEOS LEARN ALOT TO VERY CRAZY INFO check out http://www.banned.video

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
1 month ago

Biden opened the border. The buck stops there. El Salvador owes the U.S. nothing. If America is going to welcome my convicts with open arms, I’m going to send them there.

TinaKay Weidner
TinaKay Weidner
1 month ago
Reply to  Josef Švejk

Your all losers. Wow what a trip lol I’m sure u know Donald and how he is to his friends right Heck Naw your full of it you just can’t handle the ONLY ONE STANDING UP LIKE UP UP TO STAND UP FOR THIS COUNTRY DONT U KNOW HOW BAD THINGS ARE WHO ARE U TO TALK CRAP LIKE U KNOW HIM HES THE BEST PRESIDENT WE’VE HAD SO FAR HE ACTUALLY CARED ABOUT HIS PEOPLE HECK GAS PRICES WERE AWESOME! WE ALL HAD LIL MONEY EVEN AFTER PUTTING GAS IN OUR VEHICLES WE STILL HAD SOME TO SPEND PRICES ARE HORRIBLE & Hummm I BET U THINK THE 2020 ELECTION WASNT STOLLEN TO RIGHT? WELL THE ELECTION WAS 4 A FACT STOLLEN WANT PROOF THEN UVE GOT TO SEE (2000 MULES)←PLEASE DO WATCH THIS DOCUMENTARY IF U THINK THE 2020 ELECTION WAS NOT STOLLEN
I DARE YOU THEN AFTER U SEE THE UNDENIABLE TRUE FACTS THAT TOOK PLACE

Damon Hager
Damon Hager
1 month ago
Reply to  Josef Švejk

Britain’s Brexit politician Nigel Farage is a close friend of Donald Trump. We’ll see how that one pans out. Farage is no sycophant, but I suspect Trump doesn’t much care for suck-ups.
I make no comment on Trump’s personality, since I don’t know him except from public appearances and the memoirs of present or former enemies. In other words, I don’t know him at all. His children clearly love him, and that says quite a lot, as even Hilary Clinton recognised.

mac mahmood
mac mahmood
1 month ago
Reply to  Damon Hager

Al Capone’s children loved him too! Al capone gave to charity. And Trump?

mac mahmood
mac mahmood
1 month ago
Reply to  Josef Švejk

A fool’s errand?

0 01
0 01
1 month ago

Trump abuses and alienates everyone around them regardless who they are, he can’t help himself, It’s in his nature and he very predictable as a result, almost clock work in a way. True friendship is an impossibility with him. He has an obsessively, paranoid need to dominate everyone around him do to his deep insecurities, to the point of being counter-productive and even self-destructive. An old leopard leopard never changes his spots and the scorpion always stings the tortoise that it’s floating on because that’s what it does, even if it drowns as a result.

TinaKay Weidner
TinaKay Weidner
1 month ago
Reply to  0 01

Your all losers. Wow what a trip lol I’m sure u know Donald and how he is to his friends right Heck Naw your full of it you just can’t handle the ONLY ONE STANDING UP LIKE UP UP TO STAND UP FOR THIS COUNTRY DONT U KNOW HOW BAD THINGS ARE WHO ARE U TO TALK CRAP LIKE U KNOW HIM HES THE BEST PRESIDENT WE’VE HAD SO FAR HE ACTUALLY CARED ABOUT HIS PEOPLE HECK GAS PRICES WERE AWESOME! WE ALL HAD LIL MONEY EVEN AFTER PUTTING GAS IN OUR VEHICLES WE STILL HAD SOME TO SPEND PRICES ARE HORRIBLE & Hummm I BET U THINK THE 2020 ELECTION WASNT STOLLEN TO RIGHT? WELL THE ELECTION WAS 4 A FACT STOLLEN WANT PROOF THEN UVE GOT TO SEE (2000 MULES)←PLEASE DO WATCH THIS DOCUMENTARY IF U THINK THE 2020 ELECTION WAS NOT STOLLEN
I DARE YOU THEN AFTER U SEE THE UNDENIABLE TRUE FACTS THAT TOOK PLACE

Stephen Walsh
Stephen Walsh
1 month ago

Bid deal. Bukele is taking El Salvador’s side on this issue, and Trump is taking America’s. There is much to admire in what Bukele has achieved, but Americans deserve protection from murderous criminality too.

Yuri G
Yuri G
1 month ago

That was unfair. The blame totally lies with the Biden administration. All one has to do is to apply the asylum laws and none of the bandits would be qualified. Turn the gangs away, deport them and best yet, finish the wall.

Michael Clarke
Michael Clarke
1 month ago
Reply to  Yuri G

If El Salvador is sending its criminals to the US, the US should send them back.