Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) sought out a marginally less offensive interpretation of Donald Trump’s declaration Saturday that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” claiming on CNN Monday that he was actually referring to Democratic policies that are doing the “poisoning.”
At a rally in New Hampshire, Trump used the term that historians have noted echo those of Adolf Hitler, who wrote of “blood poisoning” in his 1925 manifesto, Mein Kampf.
“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. 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,” Trump said.
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“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. The terrorism is going to be.”
On Monday, CNN anchor Abby Phillip asked Malliotakis, “Is Trump right that immigrants are poisoning the blood of this country?”
The New York lawmaker took issue with the question.
“Well I don’t think that’s what he was saying,” Malliotakis responded. “When he said ‘they are poisoning,’ I think he was talking about the Democratic policies. I think he was talking about the open border policy.”
“You know what’s actually poisoning America is the amount of fentanyl that’s coming over the open border,” she continued. “And so this is a serious issue, and I think that’s what he’s talking about.”
Phillip pushed back, saying that Trump “was pretty clear” in his comments.
“He was saying that the immigrants who are coming in—he says they’re poisoning the blood of the nation.”
Malliotakis responded with a note about Trump’s word choice.
“He never said ‘immigrants are poisoning,’ though,'” she said, adding later: “He didn’t say the word ‘immigrants.’”
Even if Trump was referring to Democratic policies as doing the “poisoning,” the meaning still implies that the policies are causing more immigrants from “all over the world” to enter the U.S., therefore “poisoning” the country. The issue remains.
Nevertheless, Malliotakis went on to claim that Trump couldn’t be “anti-immigrant” because of his family and his work at the Trump Organization.
“The reality is, he was married to immigrants,” she said. “He’s hired immigrants.”
