Getty Bill Clinton dismisses Trump’s push to wall off America

Bill Clinton on Monday dismissed Donald Trump’s promises to insulate America with walls and immigration bans, casting the world as too interdependent for the United States to be isolated.

“Even if Donald Trump builds his wall at the Rio Grande, the Internet will pierce it,” the former president said at a private fundraiser for his wife’s campaign, according to a donor in the room.


The comment was just part of Clinton’s broader remarks, but it came soon after the Republican poll leader proposed a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

Clinton, who spoke for 30 minutes and did not take questions, is becoming an ever-more-active presence in Hillary Clinton’s campaign. But the party’s rainmaker has kept his role out of the public eye, speaking mostly at private events this election cycle. Reporters were not allowed into the reception on Monday.

While Clinton did not mention Trump by name for the rest of his speech, he spoke to the tenor of the campaign thus far, saying, “We have to elect the grown-up in the room” and “It is our responsibility to build up the positive and defeat the negative.”

And when making the case that the election will partly be about building a modern security infrastructure, the former president alluded to a different kind of border than the ones at the center of Trump’s campaign: “We have to build a national defense system to protect us in a world where borders are more like nets than walls,” he said.

The former president’s comments came just minutes after Hillary Clinton tweeted a response to Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigrants: “This is reprehensible, prejudiced and divisive. @realDonaldTrump, you don’t get it. This makes us less safe. -H".