CNN host shuts down flailing Republican’s wild spin of Trump’s xenophobic rant about immigrants

CNN’s Abby Phillip was aghast at Rep. Nicole Malliotaki’s, R-N.Y., explanation of Donald Trump’s recent assertion that foreign immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” at a recent campaign even in New Hampshire in which he also invoked Russian President Vladimir Putin. “You know, when they let, I think the real number is like 15, 16 million people into our country, when they do that, we got a lot of work to do,” the former president said. “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 in 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. Nobody’s even looking at them. They just come in. The crime is going to be tremendous.”

“Well, I don’t think that’s what he was saying,” Malliotakis said to Phillip. “When he said they are poisoning, I think he was talking with the Democratic policies. I think he was talking about open border policy.” Phillip then countered, “Congresswoman, you’re saying that’s what you think he’s saying but he was pretty clear. He was saying that the immigrants who are coming in, he says they’re poisoning the blood of the nation. He was talking about people, not policy.” Malliotakis argued that Trump can’t be anti-immigrant, as “some people are trying to make” him seem, because he has both married and employed them in the past.