When Donald Trump was asked about his position on immigration in the final presidential debate, he started off by repeating his usual riff on building a wall and stopping drugs from coming into the country. He added that “one of my first acts” would be to “get all of the drug lords” and get them out of the country.
And then he decided to show off his Spanish.
“We have some bad hombres here and we’re gonna get them out,” he said, in a remark that reportedly drew some gasps from the press pool at the debate. Here’s the full excerpt:
One of my first acts will be to get all of the drug lords, we have some bad, bad people in this country that have to go out. We'll get them out, secure the border, and once the border is secured, at a later date we'll make a determination as to the rest. But we have some bad hombres here and we're going to get them out.
This isn’t the first time Trump has used the phrase. Back in August 2015, Trump said in an interview with a conservative radio host, “People are coming through the border that are really bad hombres and bad dudes.”
Of course, this harks back to the core of Trump’s message since his launch speech, when he said that Mexico was sending criminals and “rapists” into the US — it’s just a particularly colorful way to say that.
