Trump responds to Hitler comparisons

The former president has insisted he wasn’t channeling ‘Mein Kampf’ during a speech on illegal immigration

Former US President Donald Trump has defended his assertion that illegal immigration is “poisoning the blood” of America, claiming that he had no idea Adolf Hitler used similar language in his book, Mein Kampf.

Speaking at a campaign rally in New Hampshire last weekend, Trump declared that the flow of illegal immigrants into the US – which hit an all time record this fiscal year – was “poisoning the blood of our country,” adding that “they're coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.” He made similar statements at a rally in Iowa later in the week, and in a campaign video on Thursday.

Trump was excoriated for the remark by liberal media outlets and by President Joe Biden’s campaign team, who accused him of “parroting Hitler.” The Nazi dictator wrote in Mein Kampf that “inferior races” were a “contamination of the blood” of Germany.

Asked by conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt whether he used the term in the same way Hitler did, Trump said on Friday that he did not.

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“No, and I never knew that Hitler said it either, by the way," Trump told Hewitt. "And I never read 'Mein Kampf.' They said I read 'Mein Kampf.' These are people that are disinformation, horrible people that we’re dealing with.”

“I’m not a student of Hitler. I never read his works,” Trump continued. "They say that he said something about blood. He didn’t say it the way I said it either, by the way, it’s a very different kind of a statement.”

Trump then repeated his argument against illegal immigration, declaring that “they’re destroying our country. They’re coming in from every continent, and we have no idea who they are, what they represent. Are they from jails? Are they from prisons? And I will tell you, a big percentage of the people coming in are from prisons and from mental institutions and are terrorists… and that is poisoning our country.”

With less than a year to go until the 2024 presidential election, Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee and is leading Biden in most polls. If elected, Trump has promised to use executive powers to close the US-Mexico border, reinstate his ‘Remain in Mexico’ asylum policy, and end the Biden administration’s practice of ‘Catch and Release’, under which illegal immigrants are released into the US after apprehension with orders to show up for court dates up to 10 years later.

The furor over Trump’s “poison blood” remarks comes after several leading liberal pundits claimed that the former president would abandon NATO, sic the military on protesters, and attempt to install himself as “president for life” if successful in 2024. All of the articles’ authors were prominent critics of Trump during his presidency.