Ex-GOP Rep Blames Himself For Trumps Alligator Obsession | EUROtoday

A former Republican lawmaker admitted he stands out as the man accountable for Donald Trump’s obsession with utilizing alligators as a way to discourage immigrants from coming into the U.S.

Former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh took to social media on Tuesday to clarify how a joke he made in 2011 — that he says he later apologized for — appears to have impressed Trump.

And primarily based on Walsh’s current put up, he isn’t joyful about it one bit.

In his X put up, Walsh defined that after then-President Barack Obama declared that Republicans wouldn’t be glad till he constructed an alligator-filled moat on the border, he determined to troll the Democrat.

“Believing that Obama wasn’t serious about the border, I, as a Congressman then, took a toy alligator to the floor of Congress to introduce ‘moat’ legislation backing Obama’s sarcastic idea,” Walsh stated, earlier than emphasizing, “I was joking. To make a political point.”

But apparently not everybody picked up on his sarcasm on the time, as a result of Walsh stated that in Trump’s first time period in 2019, he reportedly “demanded his aides look into the alligator-filled moat at the border idea.” Trump “loved the idea” and “wasn’t joking,” Walsh wrote.

Trump spent Tuesday flying right down to Florida to go to “Alligator Alcatraz,” which Walsh referred to as a “hastily-built migrant detention center in the alligator-filled Everglades.”

The facility, situated in a distant a part of the Florida Everglades, is anticipated to carry as many as 5,000 beds. Florida officers have famous that the various alligators and snakes surrounding the makeshift immigrant detention camp would deter anybody who tries to flee. Critics have referred to as the detention heart a human rights and environmental catastrophe ready to occur.

“Trump boasted that migrants would be eaten by alligators if they tried to escape. He’s dead serious about it,” Walsh stated earlier than condemning such an thought as “utterly cruel and inhumane.”

“I was joking about alligators 14yrs ago to make a political point. I’ve since apologized for that joke,” he wrote. “Today’s Republican Party is utterly serious about using alligators as a real life threat/deterrent against immigrants.”

“They aren’t joking, they’re implementing,” Walsh continued. “Today’s Republican Party is fully radicalized. Which is why I am no longer a Republican.”

You can see the entire put up under.

Not surprisingly, Walsh’s put up about Trump’s obsession with medieval safety measures attracted fairly just a few feedback.