Trump dismisses Hitler comparisons over anti-immigration rhetoric: 'I never read Mein Kampf'

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday repeated his claim that immigrants coming into the United States are "destroying the blood of our country," even after similar comments days earlier prompted comparisons to Adolf Hitler.

Trump addressed those comparisons directly during a rally in Iowa in which he went on a diatribe about how immigrants are "ruining our country."

"They’re destroying the blood of our country. That’s what they’re doing. They’re destroying our country. They don’t like it when I said that — and I never read Mein Kampf," Trump said, referring to Hitler's manifesto.

"They could be healthy they could be very unhealthy they could bring in disease that’s going to catch on in our country, but they do bring in crime, but they have them coming from all over the world," Trump continued. "And they’re destroying the blood of our country. They're destroying the fabric of our country."

Trump on Saturday held a rally in New Hampshire during which he claimed immigrants were “pouring into” the United States and “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Trump has used the refrain before, which the Anti-Defamation League and others have said echoes the rhetoric of Adolf Hitler, who wrote in “Mein Kampf” that German blood was being poisoned by Jews.

Democrats, including the Biden campaign and Vice President Harris, have compared Trump's rhetoric to Hitler and argued it is the latest example of how he admires authoritarians.

Trump’s allies have largely downplayed the comments, arguing that border security is a real concern for many Americans, and in some cases claiming the former president was referring literally to the way illegal drugs are poisoning Americans.

“First of all, he didn’t say immigrants were poisoning the blood of this country. He said illegal immigrants were poisoning the blood of this country, which is objectively and obviously true to anybody who looks at the statistics about fentanyl overdoses,” Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) said Tuesday.