Former President Donald Trump has doubled down on his controversial comments that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” — while denying drawing his ideas from Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.”
The Republican presidential primary front-runner used his last campaign rally Tuesday to address the escalating backlash sparked by his remarks at a weekend event.
“It’s crazy what’s going on,” he said in his latest speech, to some 1,000 MAGA supporters in Waterloo, Iowa.
“They’re ruining our country. And it’s true. They’re destroying the blood of our country,” he said, accusing immigrants of bringing crime and even disease across the border.
“That’s what they’re doing. They’re destroying our country.”
Trump, 77, however, denied reports that his rhetoric appeared to be inspired by Hitler’s manifesto published nearly a century ago.
Donald Trump defended his “blood” comments during a speech in Iowa Tuesday. AFP via Getty Images“I never read ‘Mein Kampf,'” he stated. “They said, ‘Oh, Hitler said that’ — in a much different way.”
Trump then claimed that migrants “from all over the world” pouring into the US across the border bring crime and potentially disease with them.
“They could be healthy, they could be very unhealthy,” Trump told the crowd. “They could bring in disease that’s gonna catch on in our country. But they do bring in crime.”
The ex-president has come under fire after saying in a stump speech at a crowded hockey arena in New Hampshire Saturday that the flow of migrants under President Biden’s border policies is “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Trump vowed the put an end to the migrant crisis “on my first day back in the White House.”
Trump has been accused of parroting Adolf Hitler’s ideas from “Mein Kampf.” Getty ImagesA chorus of politicians and commenters on the left has accused Trump of echoing Hitler’s musings about the “purity” of Aryan blood, which lay the foundation for the Nazis’ extermination of millions of Jews and other minorities during World War II.
Prominent Republicans, however, have come to Trump’s defense, with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) shrugging off the “blood” comments on “Meet the Press” Sunday.
“We’re talking about language. I could care less what language people use as long as we get it right,” said Graham.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) noted that his wife, an immigrant, was part of Trump’s administration.
“Well, it strikes me that didn’t bother him when he appointed Elaine Chao secretary of transportation,” McConnell said of his wife.
