California Governor Jerry Brown, 77, mocked Republican frontrunner Donald Trump’s declaration that he’ll force Mexico to pay for a wall built along the America-Mexico border, by saying that in case of a Trump win, California may have to build some walls of its own.
According to The Sacramento Bee, Brown told labor organizers at a Sacramento dinner:
“If Trump were ever elected, we’d have to build a wall around California to defend ourselves from the rest of this country. By the way that is a joke. We don’t like walls, we like bridges.”
Brown, as the Democratic governor of a famously liberal border state, has signed a lot of pro-undocumented immigrant legislation over the course of his term. He has signed into law legislation which grants driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, and even gives undocumented immigrants access to public financial aid in order to attend college.
While addressing members of the Construction Trades Council of California and the California Labor Federation, Brown declared that the state has benefitted highly from immigration. He argued that young workers bolster the economy and should be welcomed.
“Some of these old white guys ought to recognize that the whole pension system would collapse if we didn’t have a bunch of young people coming into this country and into this state.”
Brown also addressed an old feud with former Texas Governor Rick Perry, bringing it center stage.
Rick Perry withdrew from the presidential race in 2015 and ran radio ads in California trying to lure California companies to move to Texas. This maneuver was less than successful for Perry, the self proclaimed hunter of jobs, who Brown called “anonymous and forgotten.”
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