Former President Donald Trump praised China for executing drug dealers during a campaign event in Iowa Thursday.
While discussing the surge in drugs coming over the southern border, Trump said he’d previously brokered a deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping to punish fentanyl dealers in China selling the drug in the U.S. with the death penalty. The proposed deal, however, “died very quickly” after he departed the White House, Trump added. (RELATED: ‘Invasion’: Trump Vows To End Birthright Citizenship For Children Of Illegal Immigrants)
“I had a deal with President Xi, he was gonna make it illegal to produce fentanyl in China, and that would mean the death penalty and in China they have the death penalty,” Trump said.
“I said to President Xi, ‘Do you have any a drug problem?’ He looked at me like, ‘What kind of a question — of course we don’t.’ They have the death penalty. They called a quick trial,” Trump said.
WATCH:
Federal authorities have seized 17,000 pounds of fentanyl at the U.S.-Mexico border between October and April, surpassing the 14,000 pounds of the drug seized in all of fiscal year 2022, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics.
“If somebody’s selling drugs, they have a quick trial and they execute the people and it’s a terrible thing when you think about it, but when you really think about it, the average drug, I just saw a statistic: the average drug dealer in this country kills 500 people over a lifetime,” Trump said.
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