US
Republicans often say that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country
Per AFPDEC 19, 2023 at 11:22 p.m
Donald Trump Kamil Krzaczynski / AFP
Americans are accustomed to former President Donald Trump's controversial statements, but the Republican's claim that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of the country” has earned him comparisons to Adolf Hitler and fascism.
During a rally in New Hampshire over the weekend, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination declared: “If they come in I think the actual number is 15, 16 million people if they do that, we'll have a lot of work to do.” They are poisoning their blood for our country.”
“This is what they have done, they are poisoning psychiatric hospitals and prisons around the world. Not just in South America, not just in the three or four countries we're thinking of, but all over the world. They come to our country from Africa, from Asia, from all over the world.”
Trump has used inflammatory language against immigrants before, but he did so for the first time during a rally last Sunday and repeated it at another event in Iowa this evening: “They are ruining our country and it is true that they are destroying the blood.” Of our country.”
The criticism continues and the harshest comes from Democrats and civil rights groups. But the comments also caused dissatisfaction among Republicans.
The League of Latin American Citizens (Lulac), the largest Latin American civil rights group in the country, joined the AntiDefamation League (ADL) in a statement.
The comments “recall the language of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime,” estimated Domingo García, national president of Lulac. “They play on the basest and darkest human emotions to incite hatred and cause harm or worse to innocent men, women and children.”
Trump's words are reminiscent of some sentences from the book “Mein Kampf”, in which Hitler expresses the principles of his antiSemitic ideology and defenders of Aryan supremacy, such as: “All the great cultures of the past perished, died out.” Poisoning of the Blood of the primitive breeding breed”.
“I have never read Mein Kampf,” Trump said Tuesday, noting that Hitler said it “in a completely different way.”
For Jonathan Greenblatt, executive director of the AntiDefamation League, the Republican leader's comments have “real potential to spark danger and violence.”
“Tactical error”
The White House quickly condemned them. “Repeating the grotesque rhetoric of violent fascists and white supremacists and threatening repression of those who disagree with the government are dangerous attacks on the dignity and rights of all Americans, our democracy and public safety,” a spokesman said.
In the Republican Party, some downplayed the fact, like Senator Lindsey Graham: “I don't care at all about the language as long as we understand” immigration.
The secondmost likely candidate for the Republican nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, limited himself to calling it a “tactical mistake,” local station WOWT reported. However, others strongly condemned the comments.
“It's getting crazier and crazier,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told CNN. “We can’t beat Joe Biden with someone who talks like that about immigrants in this country,” whose founders were descendants of immigrants.
The migration crisis is one of the hot topics ahead of the 2024 presidential election, in which Trump is expected to compete with Democratic President Joe Biden. According to official figures, the Border Patrol has intercepted immigrants, many of them Latinos, more than two million times this year.