Trump Says Immigrants Have “Poisoned the Blood” of the US, the Right Doesn’t Care

At a New Hampshire rally, Donald Trump once again regurgitated Nazi rhetoric by claiming undocumented migrants were “poisoning the blood” of the country, a phrase employed by Hitler against the Jews during his rise to power.

Trump issued the authoritarian screed in a viral clip, talking about immigrants: “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. 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.”

The frequency of this habit from a media-aware and media-savvy Trump despite increasingly widespread coverage of its sinister origins is proof enough that it’s not unintentional. 

Nazi rhetoric consistently dehumanized its targets, specifically Jews, labeling them “vermin” and suggesting that their “impurity” undermined Germany’s moral and social bonds. 

In addition to numerous passages of Mein Kampf in which Hitler made references to “blood” and “poison,” he dropped all pretense in at least one other in which he wrote of the Jews: “He poisons the blood of others but preserves his own blood unadulterated.”

Historians and political scientists have been disturbed by Trump’s increasing and increasingly-open strides towards fascism, including such mimicry of Nazi propaganda, arguing that it both desensitizes Americans and normalizes anti-immigrant attitudes and behavior.

Republican politicians and right wing commentators are indifferent. Senator Lindsey Graham was nonplussed when asked and Fox News commentators complained only that Trump’s words would divert attention from President Biden’s political challenges. 

Between this and the fact that MAGA supporters seem excited by it, we can expect Trump’s rhetoric won’t change anytime soon.

(Video credits)