Fmr. Apprentice Rips Trump: ‘America Shouldn’t Be a Country About Building Walls’

‘Mr. Trump is used to issuing orders and being, you know, the big guy in the room’

LEMON: “Donald Trump doubling down tonight on his plan to round up and deport millions of undocumented immigrants and he insists if he is elected president, he's going to construct a giant wall on the border with Mexico and no one will be able to climb over or tunnel under.”
[clip starts]

TRUMP: “I will build the greatest wall that you've ever seen. And then they say, you can build a wall. It's too big. It's too -- it doesn't work. Well, 3,000 years ago, right? The Wall of China was built. We'd like to have that wall. That wall nobody get through, that I can tell you.”
[clip ends]
LEMON: “So, joining me now is Raj Peter Bhakta, he's a former contestant on "The Apprentice" and a former republican congressional candidate as well. I'm so happy that you are here. So, Trump says he wants to build a wall, right? So, he says illegal immigrants have got to go as well. And their kids who were born here, he said that they had to go as well. He also had more to say. This is from a Pac house in New Hampshire. Listen.”
[clip starts]
TRUMP: “The southern border is a disaster which, by the way, I turned out to be right. Remember the abuse I took? People started to see the violence and the crime. And they saw a Kate in San Francisco, a magnificent person who's family is a great family. And they saw a Jamil, and they saw so many people killed violently and viciously. The other right with a woman 66-year-old veteran, raped, sodomized, brutally killed by illegal immigrant. We have to stop -- we have to bring back our country. We've got to take it back. We've got to take it back.”
[clip ends]
LEMON: “So, I interview a lot of people, right? Before I ask you the question about what he said, and I noticed body language a lot. You are physically uncomfortable watching him. He makes -- you are squirming, why is that?”
BHAKTA: “I think re represents, Don, like somebody that's really the dark under belly of America. Listen to what he's talking about. By the way, just take for a moment into question his assertion that the Chinese with a great wall actually made a good move. Or that the Romans who built their wall to keep their barbarians out. Or the Russians who built their wall to try to keep the capitalists out. In each of those cases, those societies collapsed and the people that they were trying to keep out actually took over. So, if we think about what this country should be about, you know, it's fearful, inward looking societies that build walls. Optimistic growing societies. We tear walls down. America is a country about tearing walls down. It's not about locking people up and marching across the border and deporting them. It's about freeing people.”
LEMON: “So, saying -- having said all of that, do you disagree that there is a problem on the border? There is a problem with illegal immigration in this country? So, then what would you do, would you tear the wall down? I mean, what do you do, what's the solution?” 
BHAKTA: “I think he really need to think about it carefully and understand that the reason that people who are coming across is there is a failure in U.S.-Mexico relations that results in a lot of people not having income there that when it come across the border. And a –“
LEMON: “But it's not a real solution or it's just sort of analyze it. What is the solution then?”
BHAKTA: “I actually think without getting too far into particulars. I think you need to look at the agricultural sector in Mexico like if actually you have an inefficient agricultural sector, not to get totally off topic. That actually creates some employment and these people because of NAFTA had become pushed into some major cities of Mexico and they are flying across the border.”
LEMON: “So, Americans would say, well, that's Mexico's problem. That's not our problem.”
BHAKTA: “We stop to down its road with Bill and Hillary Clinton in 1992.”
LEMON: “Yes. You have been an ‘Apprentice’ child talent for Donald Trump, right, with this border. What is that?”

BHAKTA: “Let's, you know, look at it for a second. Mr. Trump is used to issuing orders and being, you know, the big guy in the room. Here's the challenge. The very idea that he has of building a wall, let's look at it. If you let Mr. Trump start in Brownfield, Texas, on the other side, with his Harvard MBA's with his Wall Street fat cats, with his government contractors, and start in the other side of Texas with undocumented workers. And we'll see who actually gets the wall built. Because the very idea that he's at his premise is that doesn't understand that it glued the oil in economic engine of America. Our undocumented workers –“
LEMON: “So, you're saying the undocumented workers would get there the wall built faster than his so-called fat cats, where you call as fat cats?”
BHAKTA: “Yes. Absolutely. There is no question about that. The undocumented workers are the only ones who actually get the wall built quickly and economically.”
LEMON: “But that's not to say that you agree with building the wall?”
BHAKTA: “America shouldn't be a country about building walls. America is about a country about ripping walls down and that's the core issue that represents a sort of dark under belly nativism in America. It's a shame.” 
LEMON: “I think your immigration views don't line up with the book of the GOP, right? And is that because you at one point, did you have an epiphany about immigration in this country.”
BHAKTA: “Now I think that's a great question. So, back I brought attention to this issue 10 years ago, when I was running Congress and I took an elephant across the real grand with Mariachi been playing to show how open the border. I had a band and on the elephant and nobody showed up. And I actually chased down unusual for a candidate an undocumented worker. And when I saw the fear and desperation and the quashed hope in his eyes, I began to rethink, you know, what is this country about? Are we a nation of wall-building? Or are we a nation of ripping walls down. Truly the core of it?”
LEMON: “Raj Peter Bhakta, thank you for coming in.”

Video files
Full
Compact
Audio files
Full
Compact