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President Trump and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto hold a meeting at the G-20 Summit in Hamburg on July 7, 2017

(Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images) By Philip Bump June 15 After publicly calling for Russia to rejoin the G-7 group of nations, President Trump reportedly came to the country's defense behind closed doors as well

According to BuzzFeed News, he dismissed the central reason for Russia's ouster from the group-formerly-known-as-the-G-8 during the group's meeting in Quebec last weekend

Russia's seizure of Crimea was warranted, he reportedly implied, because residents of Crimea spoke Russian anyway

It is true that most Crimeans speak Russian, as indicated in a survey published by The Washington Post shortly before the invasion

In fact, that bit of data was cited by Russian President Vladimir Putin during a speech in March 2014 addressing the move

Trump's reported argument is not a new one. But it does bring up an interesting point, as illustrated in this tweet from Texas-based writer Chris Hooks

I have some bad news for the President about south Texas https://t.co/S5YtnML9r3— chris hooks (@cd_hooks) June 14, 2018 If countries are welcome to seize those parts of neighbors that share their language, the United States might be about to get slightly smaller

According to Census Bureau data, there are at least five counties in which a majority of the population speaks Spanish

(The bureau has recent data only for larger counties.) They are: Yuma County, Ariz

53.3 percent Spanish speakers. Imperial County, Calif. 77.5 percent Spanish speakers

Miami-Dade County, Fla. 74.4 percent Spanish speakers. El Paso County, Tex. 72.4 percent Spanish speakers

Hidalgo County, Tex. 84.4 percent Spanish speakers. There are another 10 counties where a minority of the population speaks only English: Los Angeles County, Calif

43 percent speak only English. Merced County, Calif. 48.2 percent speak only English

Monterey County, Calif. 45.4 percent speak only English. Santa Clara County, Calif

47 percent speak only English. Tulare County, Calif. 48.5 percent speak only English

Hudson County, N.J. 39.5 percent speak only English. Doña Ana County, N.M. 47.5 percent speak only English

McKinley County, N.M. 42.7 percent speak only English. Bronx County, N.Y. 40.1 percent speak only English

Queens County, N.Y. 43.9 percent speak only English. That doesn't mean that the rest of the population speaks one other language, mind you

In the Bronx, Queens, Los Angeles and Santa Clara County — Silicon Valley — there are a range of other languages spoken beyond just English

(In Santa Clara County, home to a large Vietnamese population among other nationalities, census data suggest that only about 18 percent of residents speak Spanish

) It's also worth noting that none of these 15 counties has a density of foreign-language speakers that matches the saturation of Russian in Crimea

There, nearly all of the population speaks Russian. In our data, only Hidalgo County, Tex

, got over 80 percent. Were Mexico to seize the four counties on its border, though, it would be gaining about 12,300 square miles of territory, slightly more land than Russia took when it occupied Crimea

The population that would suddenly have a new nationality would be slightly more than the population of Crimea: 2

1 million. What's more, the population of those four counties (the five at the top of this article minus Miami-Dade), is more than 80 percent Mexican by origin

It's not clear what population or language density Trump thinks constitutes sufficient reason to seize another nation's territory

If Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto were to seize those counties as part of his own territory, it would be up to him to convince Trump that the levels of cultural affiliation in those places — slightly lower than Crimea's affinity for Russia — still meant that he was perfectly entitled to call them his own