Donald Trump told a crowd at his first major rally since losing the election that Joe Biden’s immigration policies were leaving children “on suicide watch”.
The former president’s concern for the welfare of migrant children struck a dramatically different tone to his usual rhetoric on the subject – and during his speech in Wellington, Ohio, he resurrected one of his favourites from rallies past, an anti-immigration poem called The Snake.
Claiming that people had been begging him to read it out, Mr Trump read the poem which describes a woman taking a sick snake into her home and nursing it back to health, only for it to bite her, saying: “You knew what I was when you took me in.”
Critics have said the poem suggests that immigrants are violent and not to be trusted.
While president Mr Trump instituted a policy of deliberately separating migrant children from their parents or guardians as a warning to other would-be arrivals. The policy was abandoned after an outcry although the Biden administration is still trying to reunite hundreds of children with their families or guardians.
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Speaking to a crowd in Wellington, where he was endorsing a Republican primary challenger to a GOP congressman who voted to impeach him, he also complained about his successor stopping work on his border wall, one of Mr Trump’s signature policies.
And he claimed credit for Vice President Kamala Harris visiting the border in Texas on Friday, something her previous failure to do had become a prominent talking point for Republicans and conservative pundits – although she insisted she was focused on addressing the causes of migration and pointed out she had been to the border before.
Mr Trump is expected to be at the border next week with GOP politicians and will take part in a town hall with Fox News anchor Sean Hannity.
He said: “Kamala Harris, your Vice President, only went to the border yesterday for the one simple reason, because I announced that I was going ... if I didn’t do that I don’t know if she was ever gonna go.”
