Trump claims US being ‘poisoned’ by undocumented migrants but denies using Nazi language
Just a day before, the former president referred to undocumented migrants as ‘animals’
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.One day after former president Donald Trump called some migrants “not people,” he doubled down on a previous claim: that undocumented immigrants “poisoned” the United States.
In a Fox News interview on Sunday, Media Buzz host Howard Kurtz asked Mr Trump, “Why do you use words like ‘vermin’ and ‘poisoning of the blood?’ The press, as you know, immediately reacts to that by saying, ‘Well, that’s the kind of language that Hitler and Mussolini use.’”
The 2024 frontrunner retorted, “That’s what they say. I didn’t know that, but that’s what they say.” However, he then said that he uses these terms “because our country is being poisoned.”
“We can talk about, oh, I want to be politically correct,” Mr Trump continued. “But we have people coming in from prisons and jails, long-term murderers, people with sentences that the rest are of their lives they’re going to spend in some jail in some country that many people have never even heard of….They’re all being released into our country.”
This is far from the first time the former president has used disparaging language to refer to undocumented migrants.
On Saturday at a rally in Ohio — that repeatedly veered off script — Mr Trump told the crowd: “I don’t know if you call them people…In some cases, they’re not people, in my opinion. But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say.”
He later referred to migrants as “animals.”
Months before the Ohio rally, in December, he told a New Hampshire crowd: “They’re poisoning the blood of the country. That’s what they’ve done.” After that attack, the Biden campaign claimed he was“channeling his role models” and “parroted Adolf Hitler”.
Days later, after many accused Mr Trump of echoing lines in Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kampf, he denied ever reading it. He then repeated the inflammatory phrase, this time to an Iowa audience: “It’s crazy, what’s going on. They’re ruining our country. And it’s true. They are destroying the blood of our country. That’s what they’re doing. They are destroying our country.”
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments