Donald Trump's anti-migrant comments sparked outrage across the United States on Sunday. The White House condemned a speech that “rejected” the rhetoric of “fascists.”
“You are poisoning the blood of our country,” the former US president said at a meeting in New Hampshire on Saturday, attacking the Democratic Party’s policies towards migrants.
“They are poisoning psychiatric facilities and prisons” and “coming to our country en masse” from “all over the world,” said the Republican billionaire, who is hoping for re-election in the 2024 presidential election.
A White House spokesman, Andrew Bates, responded by emphasizing leaders' duty to “bring the country together” and “not divide it through hatred and cruelty.”
“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,” he added.
In the past, Donald Trump has stated that the migration crisis at the US-Mexico border is “poisoning the blood of our country.”
In mid-November he also compared his political opponents to “vermin”. Joe Biden's campaign team then accused him of “emulating the autocratic language of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.”
The increasingly violent rhetoric of Donald Trump, who is well ahead in the polls heading into the Republican primary, is putting his party leaders in a very uncomfortable situation.
One of his Republican competitors, Chris Christie, is one of the few to openly criticize him.
“Donald Trump is poison for our political system,” attacked the former governor of New Jersey on CNN on Sunday. “We can’t beat Joe Biden with someone who talks about migrants like that.”
But the former tenant of the White House also found support from Senator Lindsey Graham: Donald Trump had “achieved results at the border,” he argued on NBC. “I don’t care what language people use as long as we do things right.”