Former President Donald Trump quoted not one but two despot world leaders—Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban—during a speech that ratcheted up his rhetoric against American immigrants and political rivals.
Trump also doubled down on his comments claiming immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”—a remark the Biden campaign characterized as having “parroted Hitler.”
“They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America… 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,” he told the crowd.
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The Biden campaign strongly rebuked Trump’s remarks.
“Tonight Donald 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,” Biden-Harris campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement.
In September, Putin took aim at the United States over the dozens of charges leveled against Trump, telling a forum the allegations represented a “rottenness” inside the U.S. that may benefit Russia.
“It shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy,” Putin said at the time, a quote repeated by Trump on Saturday at a rally.
Trump also laid praise on Orban, whom he lauded as “highly respected.”
Trump came to the defense of those arrested in connection to the Jan. 6 2021 attack on the Capitol, characterizing them not as rioters who assaulted police and civilians while storming Congress, but as political prisoners.
“I don’t call them prisoners, I call them hostages,” Trump said. “They’re hostages.”
