Trump repeats anti-immigrant tirade, denies reading Hitler
"I never read 'Mein Kampf,'" Trump told a crowd in Iowa.
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday night denied he was inspired by Hitler while repeating his comments that immigrants were “destroying the blood of our country” — despite coming under intense fire for similar remarks over the weekend.
“They’re destroying the blood of our country. That’s what they’re doing — they’re destroying our country,” Trump said Tuesday at an event in Waterloo, Iowa, echoing comments he made at a rally in New Hampshire on Saturday in which he said immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Trump’s weekend remarks were met with much criticism, including from President Joe Biden, who compared his likely 2024 opponent’s rhetoric to that used in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
“The language he uses reminds us of the language coming out of Germany in the 30s,” Biden told reporters Tuesday. “He has called those who oppose him ‘vermin’ and again this weekend he talked about the blood of our country being poisoned.”
Vice President Kamala Harris also explicitly compared Trump's language to Hitler's.
"It is language that I think people have rightly found similar to the language of Hitler," Harris said in an interview recorded Tuesday afternoon that aired on MSNBC after Trump's Iowa speech. "And I think it's critically important that we remind each other, including our children, that the true measure of the strength of a leader is based not on who they beat down but who they lift up."
Invoking her mother's perspective as an immigrant, Harris said:
"There is no question in my mind that her response to that kind of language would be ... 'We've seen this before. We know where this could go. So stand up and fight for what is right.'"
But Trump brushed off the Hitler comparison, claiming that Hitler’s rhetoric was said “in a much different way.”
“I never read 'Mein Kampf'” he told the audience in Iowa. “They said Hitler said that — in a much different way. No, they’re coming from all over the world — people all over the world. We have no idea — they could be healthy, they could be very unhealthy, they could bring in disease that’s going to catch on in our country. But they do bring in crime. … They’re destroying the blood of the country, they’re destroying the fabric of our country, and we’re going to have to get them out.”
The former president also received criticism from members of his own party.
In an interview with CNN's Kaitlan Collins, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who has endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the GOP's 2024 presidential nominee, said his party should discuss immigration policy "in terms of what it means to humanity."
"Republicans generally — whether it's Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump or anybody else — we should be talking about this in terms of what it means to humanity," he said. "I don't think we should be talking about this issue from a perspective of blood or whatever the president said, what I think we should be saying is there are human beings suffering."