As reported by the New York Times, Donald Trump wanted extreme measures to stop immigrant crossings at the border. Extreme as in, immigrants being eaten by alligators seemed like a good plan to him.
Privately, the president had often talked about fortifying a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate. He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh. After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal. But later in a meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down. That’s not allowed either, they told him.
Crazy stuff here, but this is par for the course from Trump, the hater of brown people and any other colors that aren’t white.
This takes us back to 2011, when President Barack Obama jokingly went after Republicans for their neverending excuses to avoid taking up immigration reform legislation—eerily, America’s Favorite President seems to have predicted a Trumpian future.
"Maybe they'll need a moat," Obama said mockingly to laughter from the crowd. "Maybe they'll want alligators in the moat."
Of course Obama was just kidding about Republicans here, but he knew even then that extreme anti-immigrant flames were burning brightly in the GOP. It just took Trump to say the quiet part out loud, stoking that extreme hate into the fiery fever pitch Obama once jokingly deemed possible.