President Trump said Thursday that the woman who climbed the Statue of Liberty on the Fourth of July was a “clown” and that he would have waited with “a net” rather than scale the monument to rescue her.
“You saw that clown yesterday on the Statue of Liberty? You see the guys that went up there? I wouldn’t have done it,” Trump said during a campaign rally in Montana.
“I would have said, ‘Let’s get some nets and let’s wait till she comes down. Just get some nets, really,'” he said. “You see those guys, the bravery of doing that? What a group. We protect ICE and our Border Patrol and our law enforcement. And our fire departments … We protect our people.”
Trump mentioned the woman’s decision to climb the statue after saying, “We protect ICE. They protect us and we protect them.”
Protester Patricia Okoumou, 44, climbed the monument following an “Abolish ICE” protest staged by the group Rise and Resist.
Okoumou, an immigrant from the Democratic Republic of Congo living in Staten Island, was detained after a four-hour standoff that prompted Liberty Island’s evacuation in New York Harbor.
Okoumou pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges of trespassing, interfering with agency functions, and disorderly conduct. She told Fox News that her protest against “zero tolerance” immigration enforcement was a “spur of the moment” decision.
The protester invoked former first lady Michelle Obama as inspiration, telling Fox News, “Our beloved first lady that I care so much about said that when they go low, we go high, and I went as high as I could.”
