Donald Trump, the favorite Republican candidate to challenge Joe Biden for the U.S. presidency in 2024, attacked undocumented immigrants Saturday night during a campaign rally in Durham, New Hampshire, saying they are “poisoning the blood of the people.” .” Country.” The former president, who had a clear lead over his rivals in the upcoming party primaries, vowed to crack down on irregular immigration and restrict regular immigration if elected for a second four-year term.
It is the second time since September that the tycoon, who is embroiled in at least five legal cases – four of them high-profile -, has resorted to that toxic image in a xenophobic speech reminiscent of Nazi rhetoric that the League's boss cited Anti-Defamation Lawyer (ADL) Jonathan Greenblatt called his language “racist, xenophobic and despicable.” It was then that the tycoon first resorted to this image, which could become one of the crutches of his election campaign, during an interview with The National Pulse, a right-wing website.
Numerous American media outlets point out that, unlike in the 2016 election campaign, Trump already embodies the Republican establishment; That is, the radical positions he represents have occupied the center of the party and he is no longer an outsider viewed with surprise by traditional Republicans. Despite the growing importance of Hispanics in his electorate – to the detriment of the support they had given Democrats in previous elections – his speech on Saturday, cheered by thousands of supporters, took aim at undocumented immigrants, most of them of that background He added that in addition to Latin America, immigrants from Asia and Africa were also coming to the United States. “They are streaming into our country from all over the world,” he denounced.
As in 2016, during the campaign that brought him to the White House, Trump, who polls show Biden leading in two key states (Michigan and Georgia), has made border security one of the main themes of his platform, crowned by the promise of building the wall with Mexico. As he did then, the re-election candidate now promises to resume the hardline policies of his presidency (2017-2021) and “stop the invasion of our southern border and launch the largest internal deportation operation in the history of the United States.” At the rally in Durham, he recited lyrics to a song in which he compares immigrants to deadly snakes.
Speaking to Portal, Jason Stanley, Yale professor and author of a book on fascism, said Trump's repeated use of such language was dangerous because it echoed the rhetoric of Adolf Hitler, who warned of contamination with “poisoned” German blood from the Jews” in “Mein Kampf”. “Now [Trump] He uses this vocabulary at rallies. Repeating a dangerous speech increases its normalization and recommendations,” the expert said. “It’s a very concerning speech for the safety of immigrants in the United States.”
The phrase “You are poisoning the blood of our country” did not appear in Trump's speech, which was distributed to the media before Saturday's event, so it is unclear whether the use of that rhetoric was planned or intentionally adopted.
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Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung downplayed the phrase after being asked by reporters, drawing attention to the controversy over anti-Semitism on U.S. campuses. He stated that the media and academia have “provided a safe haven for dangerous anti-Semitism and pro-Hamas rhetoric that is both dangerous and alarming.” In October, Cheung also called criticism of Trump's xenophobic language absurd and said similar language was used daily in books, articles and television shows.
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