Former President Donald Trump has doubled down on his controversial comment that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” – while disavowing his ideas from Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”.
The Republican presidential front-runner used his final campaign rally on Tuesday to address the growing backlash sparked by his remarks at the weekend event.
“It’s crazy what’s happening,” he said in his latest speech, to about 1,000 MAGA supporters in Waterloo, Iowa.
“They are ruining our country. And it is true. They destroy the blood of our country,” he said while accusing immigrants of bringing crime and even disease across the border.
“That’s what they do. They are 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’ve never read ‘Mein Kampf,'” he said. “They say, ‘Oh, Hitler said that’ – in a very different way.”
Trump later claimed that immigrants “from all over the world” entering the US across the border bring crime and potentially disease with them.
“They can be healthy, they can be very unhealthy,” Trump told the crowd. “They can bring diseases that will attack our country. But they bring crime.”
The former president drew criticism after saying in a stump speech at a packed hockey arena in New Hampshire on Saturday that the flow of immigrants under President Biden’s border policy was “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Trump vowed to end the immigration crisis “on my first day back in the White House.”
Trump has been accused of echoing Adolf Hitler’s ideas from “Mein Kampf.” Getty Images
A chorus of politicians and commentators on the left accused Trump of echoing Hitler’s musings about the “purity” of Aryan blood, which laid the groundwork for the extermination of millions of Jews and other minorities by the Nazis during World War II.
Prominent Republicans, however, have come to Trump’s defense, with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) dismissing the “blood” comment on “Meet the Press” Sunday.
“We are talking about language. I don’t care what language people use as long as we do it right,” Graham said.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) noted that his wife, an immigrant, is part of the Trump administration.
“Well, I guess I didn’t bother him when he appointed Elaine Chao as transportation secretary,” McConnell said of his wife.
Categories: Trending
Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
