'Zero people came in': Trump says he solved the border in 90 days and nobody's talking about it

WASHINGTON, DC: President Donald Trump claimed he brought illegal crossings at the southern border down to zero over the last 16 months. He said experts called the situation impossible, but he fixed it in just 90 days.

Still, he can’t help but grumble; he thinks political wins don’t last. People moved on, he says, and forgot the border crisis even happened, even though it was a major part of his presidency. 

Trump claims zero crossings over 16 months

Trump described the situation he stepped into as a crisis during his 77 WABC interview with Michael Cohen. 

He claimed the Biden administration had let 25 million people cross the border without proper checks; some of them, he said, were criminals, murderers, and even people released from mental institutions.

Right after taking office, he said he jumped into action and had things mostly under control in about a month.

"They were pouring into our country, totally unchecked and unvetted. I solved the problem in 30 days and solved it beautifully in 60, and at the end of 90 days, nobody comes in," Trump said. "In the last 16 months, zero people came in through our southern border, where it was just an open sieve. It was an open wound, and zero people came in."

He emphasized that the numbers he mentioned came from independent reports, not his own team. According to him, legal immigration kept moving along as usual, but illegal crossings stopped: "People come into our country, but they have to come in legally, and they do come in legally, but nobody comes to our southern border. Nobody. Literally, it's hard to believe."

Trump says a political victory has 'a two-week life'

For him, the border was an example of a bigger problem with politics. He argued that when he solves something quickly, it vanishes from public memory before he can get much credit.

His advisors told him there’s no political advantage in talking about the border now, people have already moved on because, in his view, the problem is gone.

"In politics I've found a victory has a two-week life. You solve a problem that was, according to most, insolvable, and I did it literally in 30 days," Trump said. "When I want to talk about it, the so-called experts say, 'Sir, nobody cares about the border. You solved the problem. They forgot.'"

He called the border one of the main issues in both his 2016 and 2024 campaigns. Democrats pushed back against his policies in the past, but now, he said, they’ve started to admit publicly they should’ve done something earlier.

"I watched the Democrats now apologizing. They're saying we should have done that," Trump said. "But there's a two-week life to things, and that's a shame."

He also took a dig at former Vice President Kamala Harris, "I got elected partially on the border... Kamala was the Border Czar, and she never spoke to the Border Patrol. She never went there. She knew less about the border than a child would know."

"I solved the border problem, and nobody even talks about it. I did things that, when I want to remind people, they say, 'Wow, the border was a real problem.' It was probably the biggest thing talked about during the election, and I solved it quickly and effectively," Trump said he expects history to recognize the achievement even if the current political environment has moved past it.