Former President Donald Trump forged ahead during a speech in Iowa Tuesday with more of the same anti-immigrant rhetoric he used over the weekend.
Repeating assertions that undocumented migrants were destroying “the blood of our country,” Trump also noted the criticism he has received since his remarks Saturday, in which he said undocumented migrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.” The term “blood poisoning” is referenced in Hitler’s 1925 manifesto, Mein Kampf. Trump has notably replaced “poisoning” with “destroying” after the Biden campaign compared the speech to Adolf Hitler.
“They said, ‘Oh, Hitler said that.’ In a much different way,” Trump claimed.
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“They don’t like it when I say that, and I never read Mein Kampf,” he added, also apparently referring to a resurfaced 1990 interview his first wife, Ivana Trump, gave to Vanity Fair in which she said that he kept by his bed a book of the Nazi dictator’s speeches.
In his remarks in Waterloo, Trump avoided mentioning the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling earlier in the day that he cannot be allowed on the state’s 2024 GOP primary ballot because he “engaged in insurrection” on Jan. 6, 2021. The former president instead spent much of his time criticizing President Joe Biden and cementing his anti-immigration status.
“Yesterday, we had the single-highest day record of illegal border crossings ever recorded: 12,600 in one day. We have no idea who any of them are. They come from Africa. They come from Asia. They come from South America—but not just South America. They’re all over the world,” he said. “They dump them on the border and they pour into our country and nobody’s there to check them. And the border patrol is incredible, by the way—they want to do it, but they’re told not to do their job.”
“It’s crazy, what’s going on. They’re ruining our country. And it’s true: they’re destroying the blood of our country. That’s what they’re doing. They’re destroying our country,” he continued.
Trump has rarely been shy about framing the many legal developments that concern him as some sort of partisan plot to thwart his campaign for a second term, but Tuesday night was different, instead talking to his supporters about a variety of old standbys.
“On day one I will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for the school pushing Critical Race Theory, transgender insanity, and inappropriate racial, sexual or political content on our children, and I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate,” he said to a big applause.
“And as I said before—I can’t believe I have to say it, but I might as well: I will keep men out of women’s sports,” he declared.
Flanked by Christmas trees, Trump also pledged that if he were to win a second term, “never again will your government be used to target Christians and other religious believers.”
And the indicted former president, while criticizing GOP primary opponent Asa Hutchinson, once again insisted that his cognitive abilities are fine, and blamed the media for bringing attention to his gaffes.
“I call him ‘Ada.’ It’s ‘Asa.’ The only reason I corrected it is because they’ll say, ‘He didn’t know his name. He didn’t know his name. He must be cognitively—’” Trump said. “Don’t forget: I do most of this stuff without teleprompters.”
Trump also spoke kindly of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose authoritarian moves have likewise drawn praise from the likes of Tucker Carlson and other right-wingers in the United States.
