Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called for the U.S. to build a border wall with Canada during the GOP debate on Wednesday night.
“There was enough fentanyl that was captured just on the northern border last year to kill three million Americans,” he said.
“So we got to just skate to where the puck is going, not just where the puck is. Don’t just build the wall, build both walls.”
Ramaswamy said he is the only one of the GOP candidates to visit the U.S.’s border with Canada.
In October, he posted a series of videos on X, formerly known as Twitter, of that visit to the Roxham Road crossing in Quebec, where he highlighted the fentanyl trade and migration across that border point.
The crossing was closed in March after Canada and the U.S. reached a deal to update the terms of the Safe Third Country Agreement, and after nearly 40,000 migrants used it in 2022, according to federal data.
The youngest candidate in the Republican race at 38, Ramaswamy has sparked criticism for his foreign policy views, arguing for positions including that “major concessions” should be given to Russia in order to end the war in Ukraine and that U.S. military support for Taiwan should have an expiration date. He has also stoked anti-government sentiments by questioning the narratives surrounding 9/11 and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Competing GOP candidate Nikki Haley called Ramaswamy “scum” during Wednesday’s debate after he accused her daughter of having a TikTok account until recently when the topic of China came up.
It is not the first time Republicans have targeted Canada.
U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert suggested Canada needed to be “liberated” along with Ukraine during the COVID-19 convoy protests in February 2022, while Trump accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of “woke tyranny” during the same time period.
Trump is currently leading in the polls to be the GOP’s presidential candidate for 2024.
— with a file from Global’s Sean Boynton.