El Salvador president says US now feels less safe than his third-world country: 'It's unthinkable'

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, who managed to transform his country from the murder capital of the world into one of most innovative in all of Latin America, said that he would no longer feel safe living in most modern American cities as violent crime and misguided policies have turned them unrecognizable.

Bukele made the comment in a wide-ranging interview on Fox Nation’s "Tucker Carlson Today," where he joined the Fox News primetime host to discuss law and order and how his government's efforts to combat the stranglehold MS-13 had on the country effectively drove the murder rate down by 75% since he took office.

Bukele told Carlson that he believes the erosion of major U.S. cities, now riddled with crime and chaos, is "by design" and a product of "enemies" within the U.S. political system.

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"The demise of the U.S. has to come from within. No external enemy can cause this much damage," Bukele said. "When you're watching internal operations here you can see cities that were pristinely beautiful 30 years ago [and] are a wasteland right now."

"I mean, I'm from El Salvador, a third-world country in Central America, and I myself see cities here and say I wouldn't live here. That would be unthinkable three decades ago, that a Salvadoran wouldn't want to live in a U.S. main city," he told Carlson, pointing to cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York and Chicago, where he said he would fear for his safety.

After years of El Salvador leading the world in homicides, Bukele is recognized for having reduced crime there to its lowest rate in more than 20 years. The 41-year-old leader, who credits his increase of police and military presence and his crackdown on gangs for the country's turnaround, questioned the United States' defund the police movement and other initiatives of the left, telling Carlson they "make no sense."

"When you look how the cities are eroding so fast, this has to be by design. I mean who would make so many stupid decisions?" Bukele asked. "They're literally giving some people drugs in some us cities, or they say we're going to give you money if you don't work. They make all these laws that make no sense. If they have high crime, they say okay I have a solution, let's defund the police."

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"They make these decisions openly," he continued. "It's not even [a] secret and we all know what will be the consequences of it. The defunding of the police, allowing shoplifting, giving drugs to drug addicts, giving money to people to stop work[ing], what will be the consequences? You'll destroy society, you'll destroy the city, you'll destroy the economy…and it's already happening."

"You would think how could they be so dumb. Of course, they're not," he added. "They're very smart. It's by design. There's no other logical explanation."

Bukele has emerged as one of the most popular leaders in the world since he took office in 2019. According to the Associated Press, Bukele enjoys an approval rating of more than 90% among Salvadorans who saw three of four previous presidents jailed or exiled for corruption.

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In the full episode, Fox Nation subscribers can hear more from Bukele on his initiatives to further decrease crime, his embrace of cryptocurrency and his bold perspective on the world's economic system.

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