A former Republican lawmaker admitted he may be the guy to blame for Donald Trump’s obsession with using alligators as a method to deter immigrants from entering the U.S.
Former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh took to social media on Tuesday to explain how a joke he made in 2011 — that he says he later apologized for — seems to have inspired Trump.
And based on Walsh’s recent post, he isn’t happy about it one bit.
In his X post, Walsh explained that after then-President Barack Obama declared that Republicans wouldn’t be satisfied until he built an alligator-filled moat at the border, he decided 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 said, before emphasizing, “I was joking. To make a political point.”
But apparently not everyone picked up on his sarcasm at the time, because Walsh said that during Trump’s first term 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 down to Florida to visit “Alligator Alcatraz,” which Walsh called a “hastily-built migrant detention center in the alligator-filled Everglades.”
The facility, located in a remote part of the Florida Everglades, is expected to hold as many as 5,000 beds. Florida officials have noted that the many alligators and snakes surrounding the makeshift immigrant detention camp would deter anyone who tries to escape. Critics have called the detention center a human rights and environmental disaster waiting to happen.
“Trump boasted that migrants would be eaten by alligators if they tried to escape. He’s dead serious about it,” Walsh said before condemning such an idea 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 complete post below.
Not surprisingly, Walsh’s post about Trump’s obsession with medieval security measures attracted quite a few comments.