Trump acknowledges Hitler comparisons — as he doubles down on rhetoric despite GOP pushback

Former President Donald Trump pushed back on comparisons to Adolf Hitler as he denied that he ever read “Mein Kampf” while doubling down on his claims that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

“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 his comments over the weekend that drew comparisons to fascists. 

“I never read ‘Mein Kampf’” Trump told the Iowa audience. “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 comments came amid mounting backlash over his earlier comments. Even some Republicans on Tuesday condemned the former president’s rhetoric.

“I thought that was horrible, that those comments are — just have no place, particularly from a former president,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, told reporters, according to NBC News. “So they’re deplorable.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., seemed to articulate a personal gripe with Trump’s controversial speech — McConnell’s wife and former secretary of transportation, Elaine Chao, immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan as a child. “It strikes me that it didn’t bother him when he appointed Elaine Chao secretary of transportation,” McConnell said. 

“I think that that rhetoric is very inappropriate, but this administration’s policies are feeding right into it. And so I disagree with that. I think we should celebrate our diversity,” said Sen. Tim Rounds, R-S.D. “But unfortunately, that type of rhetoric is what happens when you don’t have a border policy that works. And it just simply feeds that type of poor, unacceptable rhetoric.”

“He’s disgusting, and what he’s doing is dog-whistling to Americans who feel absolutely under stress and strain from the economy and from the conflicts around the world, and he’s dog-whistling it to blame it on people from areas that don’t look like us,” said GOP presidential candidate and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie. 

Still, some Republican Trump allies have sought to defend the comments.

“We’re talking about language. I could care less what language people use as long as we get it right,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said during a recent appearance on NBC. 

When CNN’s Abby Phillip pointed out the insidious nature of what was said to Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., Malliotakis replied, “I don’t think that’s what he was saying.”

“When he said they are poisoning, I think he was talking with the Democratic policies. I think he was talking about open border policy,” the GOP lawmaker continued, going so far as to argue 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. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in a clip shared on Monday by Fox News, said, “I don’t know what this means with the blood stuff. I know people are trying to draw historical allusions. I don’t know if that’s what he meant.”

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The Biden administration swiftly denounced Trump’s words, drawing comparisons to Hitler, who used similar “blood poisoning” language in his “Mein Kampf” manifesto, per NBC News. Over the weekend, Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said that Trump “channeled his role models as he parroted Adolf Hitler, praised Kim Jong Un, and quoted Vladimir Putin while running for president on a promise to rule as a dictator and threaten American democracy.”

The New York Times reported that in one chapter of “Mein Kampf,” Hitler wrote, “All the great civilizations of the past became decadent because the originally creative race died out, as a result of contamination of the blood.” In another section, he draws a connection between “the poison which has invaded the national body” with an “influx of foreign blood.”

Trump in his Tuesday speech also touted the unfounded claim that leaders of unspecified countries were sending occupants of prisons and mental health institutions to the U.S.

Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, seemed to rebuff allegations of Republican criticism of Trump over his recent remarks, asserting that the former president “has by far the most Senate endorsements in this race, people who are fighters and want to Make America Great Again.”