President Trump said Wednesday that he “wouldn’t be surprised” if billionaire philanthropist George Soros or someone else is funding the caravan of Central American migrants moving toward the U.S.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Trump told reporters outside the White House when asked if “someone” is paying for the caravan.
“George Soros?” a reporter interjected.
{mosads}”I don’t know who, but I wouldn’t be surprised,” Trump said. “A lot of people say yes.”
The unfounded conspiracy theory that Soros, a Democratic megadonor, may be providing financial support for the group of migrants has steadily spread among conservatives in recent weeks, The Washington Post reports.
Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham, Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs have all raised the idea that the group was receiving outside funding from Soros or politically motivated groups, and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) suggested in a tweet that Soros was paying the migrants without elaborating any further.
The president, who suggested at a campaign rally in Houston that the migrants were being paid to come to the U.S., later shared a video that accompanied that Gaetz tweet.
Robert Gregory Bowers, the man accused of killing 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue over the weekend, echoed Trump’s rhetoric on the migrant caravan, calling it a group of “invaders” in a social media post before the shooting.
Bowers additionally railed against HIAS, a Jewish refugee resettlement organization he accused of helping bring people to the United States to carry out violence.
Days before the shooting, Soros, who is Jewish, was one of several prominent Democrats targeted by a series of mail bombs.
Trump on Wednesday denied that he was “fear mongering” about the caravan, which he has painted as an imminent threat to national security and claimed is filled with “thugs,” “criminals” and “unknown Middle Easterners.”
The group is largely made up of residents of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, and includes many women and children.
“Immigration is a very, very big and very dangerous — a really dangerous topic,” Trump told reporters. “And we’re not going to allow people to come into our country that don’t have the well-being of our country in mind.”
He went on to describe the caravan as a “dangerous group of people,” and said he might deploy up to 15,000 service members to the U.S. southern border to stop the migrants from entering the country.