President Trump said he believes there are more people traveling with the migrant caravan than has been reported in the media — because he’s “pretty good at estimating crowd size.”
“You have caravans coming up that look a lot larger than it’s reported actually,” Trump told ABC News in an interview published Wednesday.
“I’m pretty good at estimating crowd size, and I’ll tell you they look a lot bigger than people would think.”
The United Nations refugee agency, which has helped coordinate relief efforts, said last week that about 7,000 people were traveling with the caravan bound for the US border. The Mexican government has said there are 3,600 participants.
The number has shifted as some people have joined and others left as the caravan made its way from Honduras to Guatemala and then Mexico.
The president has previously griped about crowd size estimates, including when he claimed the media misrepresented the number of people attending his inauguration.
His former press secretary, Sean Spicer, then tried to make the case that there had been “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe.”
In the ABC interview, Trump also said he believes the caravan is made up of mostly “young men” and that the women and children seen in pictures have been posed on purpose for cameras.
“It’s a lot of young people, lot of young men — they are pushing the women up to the front — not good — and the kids right up to the front,” he told the outlet.
UNICEF estimates at least 2,300 children are among the group.
The interview with ABC came as Trump announced that the US was going to send 10,000 to 15,000 troops to the border in anticipation of the caravan’s arrival.
“We have to have a wall of people,” he said, adding that he thinks the caravan “can be considered an invasion.”
“We can’t have it,” he said.