Republicans Are Excusing Trump’s Hitleresque ‘Poison the Blood’ Rhetoric

Trump’s allies are attempting to soften his words after he channeled Hitler while attacking immigrants over the weekend

Republicans are excusing Donald Trump after the former president channeled Hitler and accused immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country.”

On Saturday, Trump addressed a crowd of supporters in Durham, New Hampshire. During one of his rants on immigration, Trump declared that migrants are “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.”

His ravings echoed the words of genocidal Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, who repeatedly compared Jewish people to a blood poison within German society. In his manifesto Mein Kampf, the dictator wrote that “all great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning,” and blamed Jews and other “undesirable” groups for said contamination. 

Despite the clear retaliatory implications of Trump’s statement — because a blood poison cannot be left untreated — his Republican sycophants quickly fell in line to excuse the former president’s statements. 

On NBC News’ Meet The Press Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) responded to the comments by stating that he “care less what language people use as long as we get it right.” 

“I believe in legal immigration. I have no animosity toward people trying to come to our country. I have animosity against terrorists and against drug dealers,” Graham said. “If you think you’re going to win the debate on illegal immigration by picking a line out of the Trump speech, most Americans understand the game has to change, that we’re under threat, that we’re going to get attacked, that our border has completely been obliterated,” he added.

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade made excuses for the former president on Monday morning, telling his co-host that Trump “was talking about the border. He was talking about people coming from other countries, coming from prisons.”

“He’s just trying to say we want to keep America, America,” Kilmeade added, “and they tried to say that this language was the problem.”

Marc Short, ex-chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence, told Fox News on Sunday that he felt it was “highly unlikely that Donald Trump has ever read Mein Kampf.” 

Short must not be aware that Trump has reportedly acknowledged that he was once gifted a copy of Hitler’s book. According to his ex-wife, Ivana Trump, the former president even kept a collection of Hitler’s speeches in a cabinet at his bedside and would read them from time to time. 

Short’s analysis of the situation also ignores the various times Trump has invoked Hitler as a model for his own desires as a political leader. According to The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, Trump once told White House Chief of Staff John Kelly that he wished the generals under his command were more like “the German generals in World War II.” 

When Kelly reminded Trump that Hitler’s subordinates had participated in assassination plots against him on multiple occasions, Trump responded “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Bender reported in 2021 that Trump had also told Kelly that “Hitler did a lot of good things.”

On another occasion, Trump repeatedly bragged that former German Chancellor Angela Merkel had complimented his ability to draw large crowds, possibly unaware that Merkel had been subtly comparing him to Hitler.

Even without the Hitlerian rhetoric, Trump is heavily hinting that a return to the presidency would bring with it a more authoritarian approach to governance. As reported by Rolling Stone, Trump plans to bestow sweeping powers upon himself on “day one” of his presidency and will attempt to use that authority to deploy thousands of U.S. troops to the southern border, as well as to build an extensive network of migrant detention camps. 

“I have heard anywhere between 100,000 to 300,000 from President Trump, Stephen Miller, and others on what may be required to get the job done right,” one source told Rolling Stone. 

The plans potentially violate a slew of federal laws, but given that the former president is already facing a slew of criminal indictments resulting from his actions as president, legality seems to be of little concern to him.