“I’m not a student of Hitler”: Trump insists Nazi leader “didn’t say it the way I said it”
Former President Donald Trump on Friday defended his widely criticized comment that undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” dismissing outcry that his language espoused Nazi rhetoric by saying he is “not a student of Hitler,” The New York Times reports. During a radio interview, conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt requested Trump explain his remark and asked him multiple times to respond to those outraged that his phrase echoed statements made by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in his bigoted manifesto, “Mein Kampf.”
The former president said he put no racist intentions behind the statement, adding, “I know nothing about Hitler. I’m not a student of Hitler. I never read his works.” News articles, biographers and books about his presidency, however, have indicated that Trump has a long history of interest in Hitler. His first wife, Ivana Trump said she had seen him occasionally leaf through a collection of Hitler’s speeches that a friend had given him. In Friday’s interview, Trump continued to defend his comment, noting that “poisoning the blood” differs from passages in “Mein Kampf,” in which Hitler uses “poison” and “blood” to outline his views on how outsiders tainted Aryan racial purity. “They say that he said something about blood,” Trump said. “He didn’t say it the way I said it, either. By the way, it’s a very different kind of a statement.”
Trump told Hewitt that he intended “poisoning the blood” to reference immigrants from Asia, Africa and South America — though he did not mention Europe — who he broadly alleged came from prisons and mental institutions. He elaborated that he was “not talking about a specific group” but speaking of immigrants from “all over the world” who “don’t speak our language.” Trump first directly addressed the comparisons between his remark and Hitler’s on Tuesday at an Iowa campaign event. His political career has largely hinged on anti-immigrant rhetoric, and his tone has only worsened as he carries out his third presidential bid.