Trump defends comments about immigrants poisoning the blood of the country in Iowa
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday defended his comments about migrants crossing the southern border and poisoning the blood of America, amplifying the message while denying any similarity to fascist writings others had noted.
I never read Mein Kampf,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Waterloo, Iowa, referring to Adolf Hitler's fascist manifesto.
Immigrants who are in the US illegally, Trump said, are destroying the blood of our country, they are destroying the fabric of our country.”
Speaking to more than 1,000 supporters from a stage flanked by Christmas trees wearing red MAGA hats, Trump responded to mounting criticism of his rhetoric over the weekend as he doubled down on anti-immigrant blood purity statements before several thousand supporters in the U.S. New Hampshire.
They are poisoning the blood of our country, Trump said in New Hampshire about the record number of immigrants coming to the US without immediate legal status.
At Tuesday's meeting, he repeated his comments from the weekend about migrants pouring into our country and lamented what he said was a border catastrophe.
He made no mention of the Colorado Supreme Court's decision Tuesday to bar him from voting in the state under the U.S. Constitution's insurrection clause, though his campaign distributed a fundraising email about it during his speech.
The former president has long used inflammatory language about immigrants coming to the U.S., dating back to the launch of his campaign in 2015, when he said immigrants from Mexico bring drugs, bring crime and are rapists.”
But Trump has embraced increasingly authoritarian messages in his third campaign, promising to renew and supplement efforts to ban citizens from certain Muslim-majority countries and to expand ideological screening of people immigrating to the US.
He said he would only be dictator on day one, closing the border and increasing drilling.
In Waterloo on Tuesday, Trump's supporters in the crowd said his border policies were effective and necessary, even if he doesn't always say the right thing.
I don't know if he always says the right words, said 63-year-old Marylee Geist, adding that just because you aren't lucky enough to be born in this country doesn't mean you weren't born in this country. I'm not allowed to come here.
But it all has to be done legally, she added.
It's about the number of border crossings and national security, said her husband, John Geist, 68.
America is the land of opportunity, but inflows must be kept at a certain level,” he said. The number of undocumented immigrants coming through and you don't know what you're going to get, things aren't regulated in the right way.”
Alex Litterer and her father, Tom, of Charles City, said they were concerned about migrants crossing the southern border, especially because the U.S. does not have the resources to support that influx. But the 22-year-old said she disagreed with Trump's comments, adding that immigrants who come to the country legally contribute to the country's character and bring different perspectives.
Polls show most Americans agree, with two-thirds saying the country's diverse population makes the U.S. stronger.
But Trump's message about blood purity could resonate with some voters.
About a third of Americans worry that more immigration will cause U.S.-born Americans to lose economic, political and cultural influence, according to a late 2021 poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Trump is focusing on immigration policy, a crucial part of his second-term agenda, as the Biden administration and Congress try to negotiate a border security deal. President Joe Biden has been criticized for the record number of migrants at the border and is trying to address a political weakness ahead of a possible rematch with Trump.
Jackie Malecek, 50, of Waterloo said she likes Trump because many people don't know how outspoken he is and because he is a bit of a loose cannon. But she thought Trump's statement that immigrants poison the blood went a bit too far.
I am very much in favor of shutting down what is happening at the border now. There are too many people coming in here right now, I look at it every day, Malecek said. But that wording is not what I would have chosen to say.
Malecek supports allowing legal immigration and accepting refugees, but she worries about the waves of migrants crossing the border who are not vetted.
Kentucky's Democratic Governor Andy Beshear on Tuesday criticized Trump, who remains popular in his state, calling Trump's rhetoric dangerous and inappropriate. in an interview with The Associated Press. He added that immigrants living in the country illegally are still people, and we shouldn't dehumanize people, a sentiment echoed by Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in an MSNBC interview Tuesday.
Sen. J.D. Vance, an Ohio Republican, lashed out at a reporter who asked about Trump's poisoning of the blood comments, defending them as a reference to overdoses of fentanyl smuggled across the border.
You have just formulated your question implicitly, assuming that Donald Trump is talking about Adolf Hitler. It's absurd, Vance said. Obviously he was talking about the very obvious fact that the blood of Americans is being poisoned by a drug epidemic.
At a congressional hearing on July 12, James Mandryck, deputy assistant commissioner for Customs and Border Protection, said that 73 percent of fentanyl seizures at the border since October last year were smuggling attempts carried out by U.S. citizens, while the rest were done by Mexican citizens. .
Extremism experts say Trump's rhetoric resembles the language white supremacist gunmen have used to justify mass killings.
Jon Lewis, a researcher at George Washington University's Program on Extremism, pointed to the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting and this year's Texas mall shooting, which he said used similar language in writings before their attacks.
Call it like it is, said Lewis. This is fascism. This is white supremacy. This is dehumanizing language that wouldn't be out of place in a white supremacist Signal or Telegram chat.
Asked about Trump's comments about poisoning blood, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell responded with a joke about his own wife, an immigrant, who was an appointee in Trump's administration.
Well, it seems to me that that didn't bother him when he appointed Elaine Chao as Secretary of Transportation, McConnell said.
Trump currently leads the other candidates by far in polls among likely Republican voters in Iowa and across the country. Trump's campaign is hoping for a knockout performance in the caucuses that will steal momentum from his rivals and allow him to quickly clinch the nomination. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has focused his campaign on Iowa, raising expectations for him there.
I don't guarantee it, Trump said next month when he won Iowa, but I pretty much guarantee it.