Donald Trump said undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country” in an inflammatory campaign speech in New Hampshire on Saturday.The speech has drawn criticism from those who say his language echoes Nazi rhetoric .”They’ve poisoned mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just the three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world they’re coming into our country, from Africa, from Asia, all over the world they’re pouring into our country,” Trump said.Trump has previously claimed, without evidence, that South American countries send patients from ” mental institutions ” to the United States as migrants.
He also suggested migrants would bring “terrorism” and that “the crime is going to be tremendous.”
A spokesperson for Biden’s campaign, Ammar Moussa, said that Trump’s comments ” parroted Adolf Hitler ,” Politico reported.
Trump previously used language about immigrants “poisoning the blood” in an interview earlier this year. In response, the Anti-Defamation League’s CEO and national director, Jonathan Greenblatt, called his language ” racist , xenophobic and despicable ,” Reuters reported.
The “poisoning the blood of our country” language was not included in prepared remarks distributed to media before Saturday’s event, and it is not clear whether it was pre-written or if Trump improvised it, Reuters reported.
Trump has long presented himself as tough on immigration, making building the “Trump wall” on the US-Mexico border a cornerstone policy of his first presidential campaign and implementing a strict “zero-tolerance” policy that caused thousands of migrant children to become separated from their parents while in office.Trump has promised to finish the wall, to bring back travel bans, and to launch the largest deportation efforts in history if he’s reelected in 2024.His latest comments come as record numbers of immigrants reach the border and Senate Republicans ask for increased border-security spending in exchange for approving more aid for Ukraine.Authorities recorded 2.4 million migrant encounters at the southern border in the last fiscal year, an increase from 1.7 million in 2021.
credit: politico
