Highlights:
President Donald Trump again asserted that he personally halted fighting between India and Pakistan, saying the two nuclear-armed neighbours “were going at it” until he stepped in to end the conflict, a claim he has repeated nearly 70 times.
Trump has so far repeated the claim nearly 70 times that he stopped the conflict in May between India and Pakistan. “In 10 months, I ended eight wars, including Kosovo (and) Serbia, Pakistan, and India, they were going at it. Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia.… Armenia and Azerbaijan,” Trump said on Tuesday (9) in remarks to his supporters at a rally on the economy in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania.
India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7, targeting terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in retaliation for the April 22 Pahalgam attack that killed 26 civilians.
India and Pakistan reached an understanding on May 10 to end the conflict after four days of intense cross-border drone and missile strikes. India has consistently denied any third-party intervention in resolving the conflict.
Meanwhile, Trump said Cambodia and Thailand have started fighting again and “tomorrow”, he will make a phone call to those countries. “Who else could say I'm going to make a phone call and stop a war of two very powerful countries, Thailand and Cambodia. They are going at it. But I'll do it. So we're making peace through strength. That's what we're doing,” Trump said.
On immigration, Trump said that for the first time in 50 years, “we now have reverse migration, which means more jobs, better wages, and higher income for American citizens, not for illegal aliens.”
He said that he has announced a permanent pause on “Third World migration”, including from “hellholes" like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia and many other countries. “…Why can't we have some people from Norway, Sweden, just a few. Let's have a few from Denmark. Do you mind sending us a few people? Send us some nice people. Do you mind? But we always take people from Somalia, places that are a disaster, right? Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime.
The only thing they're good at is going after ships.” Last month, Trump had said he would “permanently pause" migration from “all Third World Countries” and deport foreign nationals who are a “security risk” as his administration intensified its crackdown on immigration in the wake of the killing of a National Guard member by Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal.
US Citizenship and Immigration Services issued new guidance allowing for “negative, country-specific factors” to be considered when vetting aliens from 19 high-risk countries. These countries are Afghanistan, Burma, Burundi, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, and Yemen.
These are the same countries that were subject to a travel ban announced by Trump in a proclamation issued in June this year. The proclamation ‘Restricting the Entry of Foreign Nationals to Protect the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats' restricted and limited the entry of nationals of these countries into the US and applied to both immigrants and nonimmigrants.
