Donald Trump spoke at Whittemore Center Arena on the campus of University of New Hampshire in Durham on Saturday. He slammed his opponents, taking swipes at Republican presidential primary nominees Nikki Haley and Chris Christie — whom Trump, not a poster child of fitness himself, called “a fat pig.” But Trump reserved most of his ire for President Joe Biden, who beat him four years ago in an election Trump refuses to accept was legitimate.
The former president also echoed the words of Adolf Hitler during his anti-immigrant ranting at the rally. “When they let — I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country — when they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” he said of immigrants coming into the United States. “That’s what they’ve done. They’ve poisoned mental institutions and prisons all over the world — not just in South America, not just the three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country, from Africa, from Asia — all over the world. They’re pouring into our country.”
Trump evoking Hitler rhetoric comes days after he declared that he’ll act as a “dictator” should he be reelected, but only for “Day One.” As Rolling Stone reported this week, Trump also plans to send vast numbers of U.S. troops — potentially “hundreds of thousands” — to close the southern border and help build a network of immigrant detention camps should he serve a second term.
In October, Trump made similar Hitler-esque comments, as The Washington Post reports: “It is a very sad thing for our country,” Trump said. “It’s poisoning the blood of our country. It’s so bad, and people are coming in with disease. People are coming in with every possible thing that you could have.”
Trump added during an Iowa rally: “It’s the blood of our country; what they’re doing is destroying our country.”
In Mein Kampf, there are several passages where Hitler used the words “poison” and “blood” when attacking those he claimed to threaten the purity of the Aryan race, per The New York Times.
In one of the many instances Hitler referenced those words in Mein Kampf, he wrote of the Jews: “He poisons the blood of others but preserves his own blood unadulterated.”
Jason Stanley, a Yale professor and author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them said Trump repeatedly utilizing the language Hitler used is hazardous.
“He is now employing this vocabulary in repetition in rallies. Repeating dangerous speech increases its normalization and the practices it recommends,” Stanley told Reuters. “This is very concerning talk for the safety of immigrants in the U.S.”
On Saturday, Trump also pointed out as a matter of pride that dictator Kim Jong Un is “fond” of him and not of Biden. “Who is very nice, I will tell you,” Trump said of the North Korean leader, adding, “He’s not so fond of this administration. But he’s fond of me. And we had a very good relationship.” He also praised China’s President Xi Jinping while claiming Biden “can’t put two sentences together” to negotiate with others, whereas Trump claimed he’d keep the U.S. out of World War III because of strength and because “Trump is always right,” speaking of himself in third person. “Can you imagine President Xi of China — powerful guy — they hate when I say that, ‘Oh, you say nice things’ … He controls 1.4 billion people rather ruthlessly, right? Can you imagine when he sees this guy walk into an office?”
Once again, Trump claimed the United States is running rampant with criminals and terrorists because we have “no borders,” adding, “they’re running wild in our Democrat-run cities while Christians and conservatives are persecuted, and thanks to Crooked Joe’s breathtaking weakness. He is bad, the worst president in the history the world.”
His extended bogeymen list this outing included other usual targets, as well, from sowing discord on the democratic process of voting to the “fake news media” and the “radical left Democrats” he blamed for a “rigged” 2020 election.
On Sunday, Trump heads to Reno, Nevada, for his next rally, and he will be in Waterloo, Iowa on Tuesday — his second visit to the state in a week.
