Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Wednesday that, if elected president, he will follow through on former President Donald Trump’s main promise to voters:
Build the wall — and have Mexico pay for it.
In a video released on X (formerly Twitter), the Republican governor noted that Trump has resurrected this issue while campaigning in Iowa.
DeSantis admitted to being a “little bit surprised” that Trump was discussing this with voters.
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The governor added that Trump’s pledge to build the wall was a key reason why he and many others supported Trump in 2016. “We wanted to see a wall. We wanted to see illegal immigration finally taken care of,” he said.
Yet, according to DeSantis, Trump’s line is now that there was never any “basis” or “legal mechanism” to build the wall on Mexico’s dime, and that it “wasn’t anything that was viable.”
“That was one of the main slogans in 2016. Now you’re saying there was no way to do it. That was not something … that spoke very well” of Trump, DeSantis said.
Yet, he continued, there is a way to get Mexico to fund construction of the wall.
“There is a way to get Mexico to pay for it,” he said. It is by “imposing a fee on the remittances that people who come here who are not U.S. citizens — a lot of them working illegally — when they send money back,” said DeSantis.
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“You impose that fee, you get billions of dollars from that, you use that, and be able to build a border wall.”
“So, I will actually do that. I will fulfill the promise that Donald Trump made in 2016 — to build the wall while we have Mexico and other countries pay for it,” he said. “There’s a way to get it done. I’ve laid it out. And we’re gonna make it happen.”
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