by Donald Trump issued a false tirade about undocumented immigrants and predicted this could be “the last election we ever have” if Kamala Harris wins during a private fundraising dinner this summer.
The Guardian obtained a 12-minute recording of a speech given by the Republican presidential nominee at a dinner on August 10 in Aspen, Colorado, where attendees were required to donate anywhere from $25,000 to $500,000 per couple.
Trump spent most of his address on border security and immigration, recycling now-familiar xenophobic claims from his rallies. “Radical left-wing extremists” are asking people to come in from prisons, mental institutions and sanctuaries, he declared without evidence, adding that the US was harboring “the largest number of terrorists”.
The former president argued that “smart, very street-wise” leaders in Venezuela and other South American countries were sending murderers and drug dealers to the US to reduce their own crime rates, to ease the burden on their reduce prison time and save money.
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Trump cited a false example of 22 people who he claimed came to the US after being released from prison in the Democratic Republic of Congo. “We said, ‘Where are you from?’ They said, ‘Prison’. ‘What did you do?’ ‘None of your fucking business what we did.’ You know why? Because they’re murderers.”
The candidate also said, “I hate using that foul language”, apparently acknowledging that his use of the F-word went beyond his campaign rallies. The Congolese government has said that there is no truth to Trump’s statements.
The candidate continued: “These are the hardest people. These people are coming in from Africa, from the Middle East. They are coming in from all over Asia, the bad parts, the rough parts, and the only good thing is that they make our criminals look very nice. They make our Hell’s Angels look like the nicest people in the world.”
Studies show that immigrants are less likely to commit crime than native-born Americans.
Trump flew to Aspen on a Gulfstream G-550 jet once owned by Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced late financier and convicted sex offender, after his own private plane – a Boeing 757 called Trump Force One to common – engine trouble.
The dinner was held at the $38m home of investors and art collectors John and Amy Phelan. Among the guests were casino mogul Steve Wynn, billionaire businessman Thomas Peterffy, Texas governor Greg Abbott, Florida congressman Byron Donalds, Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert and former Colorado senator Cory Gardner.
Trump, who initiated a coup attempt on January 6, 2021 and claimed that his Democratic rival Harris was the real threat to democracy, used the exclusive event to warn of dire consequences if she became president.
“Look, we have to win and if we don’t win this country is going to get worse,” he said. “You know, there’s a saying, this may be the last election we ever have and it’s an expression that I really believe, and I believe this may be the last election we ever have.”
The former president was speaking a month before his first and likely only televised debate against Harris, who polls and opinion polls widely predicted would be the clear winner. It was not what he predicted.
“I’m telling you we have a radical leftist who will be president – if she wins it will be a disaster – she wants to be president very badly. Thank God she’s supposed to be terrible at debating, even though she’s bad, and she’s supposed to be really bad at interviews. She can’t do an interview.”
Trump also claimed that Harris supports the “Pay the cops” movement, suggesting that she is a typical politician who will go back to typing once elected.
“Her policy is to reimburse the police. She wants to repay the police. She wants open borders. With a politician – and I have seen it because I have been on both sides of politics for a long time; now, a short time for this side but I have always been a contributor – she wants to go out and she wants to repay the police. And they always go back to their original plot. They always are.”
Harris, a former courtroom prosecutor, supported the “defund the police” movement in a June 2020 radio interview but later reversed her position after becoming Joe Biden’s running mate.
Trump also reflected on an assassination attempt that survived a July rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where 20-year-old Thomas Crooks opened fire from a forehead, killing firefighter Corey Comperatore, 50, and two other Trump supporters were injured.
Trump told how members of his golf club in Florida, Mar-a-Lago, asked to make a contribution to the Comperatore family. “I said absolutely and they gave me a check for a million dollars. That’s a lot of money. Perhaps more significantly we put out a GoFundMe and raised over $6m for the injured group, that’s basically three people.”
Then, remembering a meeting with Comperatore’s widow, Helen, he tried to find a sense of humor in the tragedy. “So they’re going to get millions of dollars but this woman, this beautiful woman, I gave her the check – we gave her the check – and she said, ‘This is so nice, and I appreciate it, but I would much rather have my husband.’ Now, I know some of the women in this room wouldn’t say the same thing.”
As dinner guests laughed, Trump said: “I know at least four couples. There are four couples, Governor [Abbott]that I know and you are not one of them. At least four couples here would be very happy, really.”
The event is understood to have raised $12m for the Trump campaign but it was not enough to prevent Harris from raising four times more than her opponent in August, the first full month of her White House bid.
