Bitcoin fans are rethinking their growing support for Donald Trump after the president seemingly took shots at one of the digital currency’s staunchest allies.
During his closing speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday, Trump called out the President of El Salvador for allegedly sending his country’s “drug dealers” and “people that are in jails” to the United States.
“In El Salvador murders are down 70%—why are they down?” Trump asked the crowd on Thursday.
“He would have you convinced that [it’s] because he trained murderers to be wonderful people,” he continued. “No, they’re down because they’re sending their murderers to the United States of America.”
Turns out the real reason why Donald Trump embraced #bitcoin was because he was jealous of all the positive attention @nayibbukele was receiving pic.twitter.com/3t1YoWl3cR
— Pledditor (@Pledditor) July 19, 2024
The accusation took the online Bitcoin community by surprise, following months of promises from the Trump campaign seemingly catered to their affections.
Many thought that President Nayib Bukele—who made Bitcoin the official currency of El Salvador in 2021—could be an ally with whom Trump holds much common ground on Bitcoin, crime, borders, and other matters.
“Trump is wrong AF,” tweeted Max Keiser, a member of El Salvador’s Bitcoin Office, regarding Trump’s statement, following days of tweets hyping up the pro-Bitcoin candidate. His wife and fellow office member, Stacy Herbert, said that Trump “needs to fire his speech writer.”
Taking the high road.
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) July 19, 2024
Making matters more bizarre is that Trump’s eldest son attended Bukele’s inauguration in early June, praising him for “taking on crime, corruption and the globalist invasion.” In fact, Trump himself seemingly slipped in praise for Bukele during Thursday’s speech, saying that he “happens to like the president of their country very much.”
The contradiction has many suspecting that Trump’s knock on El Salvador was a mistake, potentially mixing things up with another Central American country.
“Trump was trying to make the point that crime is down in Venezuela as they emptied the prisons and send the criminals all here,” wrote right-wing social media personality Mike Cernovich to Twitter on Friday. He cited a Bloomberg report from late December discussing Venezuela’s two-decade low in violent deaths, spurred partly by criminals fleeing its economic crisis due to a “lack of opportunities to commit crimes.”
Twitter journalist Mario Nawfal said Trump’s accusations against Bukele were partially true.
“As a result of the massive crackdown against the drug cartels that [Bukele] conducted, [criminals] fled the country,” he tweeted. “While the net effect… was, in fact, a flood of criminals escaping, it wasn't the intent of the operation.”
El Salvador’s annual homicide rate indeed declined by 70% in 2023, as Trump claimed—which followed a 55.6% drop in 2022. The latter was the year El Salvador began its mass incarceration of over 75,000 suspected gang members.
That move had invited praise from many members of Trump’s political party and his loudest supporters, including Tucker Carlson.
Trump is scheduled for an appearance at the 2024 Bitcoin Conference in Nashville next week, where it’s rumored he will announce plans to establish a U.S. strategic Bitcoin reserve if elected president. The Bitcoin Conference was the same event where Bukele announced Bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador in 2021.
“I’m looking forward to July 27th at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville,” said Keiser. “I’m sharing a stage with Trump and I’ll set him straight about El Salvador.”
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.