UPDATE (Dec. 18, 2023, 10:25 a.m. ET): Donald Trump on Saturday doubled down on his hateful claim that immigrants coming to the United States are “poisoning the blood of our country.” As NBC News noted, the term “blood poisoning” was used by Adolf Hitler to criticize immigration and the mixing of races.
It’s often tempting to ignore reports on Donald Trump’s rhetorical excesses. Everyone has seen countless examples of the former president making unhinged remarks about matters large and small, to the point that they start to have diminishing returns.
But in recent days, there’s been a flurry of new reporting on the Republican’s radical rhetoric, and given the specific details, it’s best not to shrug one’s shoulders and look away. Axios reported this week, for example, that Trump’s “violent rhetoric … has grown more extreme as the walls have begun to close in on his business empire, livelihood and personal freedom.”
Since he left office, Trump’s erratic behavior has been masked, numbed and normalized by the political fatigue permeating the media and the public. But his words’ violent turn in recent weeks — calling for a U.S. military leader to be executed, mocking a potentially fatal assault on a congressional spouse, urging police to shoot shoplifters — suggest a line has been crossed.
For those who keep up on current events, much of the list will likely seem familiar. As we discussed just the other day, Trump recently suggested that the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff deserves to be executed. He threatened my employer. He called for police officers to shoot shoplifters as a way of discouraging crime.
As his business is put on trial in New York, the former president has also lashed out wildly at the state attorney general and the judge overseeing the case — the latest in a series of related attacks against members of the judiciary.
An Associated Press report added on Thursday, “[T]he rhetorical escalation on display in recent weeks is notable for its parallels to the hardline approaches that are hallmarks of authoritarian regimes that he has occasionally praised.”
It’s against this backdrop that there was one element to the recent pattern that initially escaped my attention. The Meidas Touch Network published this report, accompanied by a striking video, highlighting a Trump interview that generated less attention. In reference to migrants entering the United States, the former president said on camera, to an outlet called the National Pulse: “Nobody has any idea where these people are coming from, and we know they come from prisons. We know they come from mental institutions and insane asylums. We know they’re terrorists. Nobody has ever seen anything like we’re witnessing right now. It is a very sad thing for our country. It’s poisoning the blood of our country.”
To be sure, there’s nothing new about Trump attacking those seeking a better life in the United States. But “poisoning the blood of our country” is new. Laura Barrón-López, White House correspondent for PBS, told viewers last night, “I checked with a historian, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, and she said that language that he’s using … echoes language used in Nazi propaganda by Adolf Hitler when Adolf Hitler actually said that Jewish people and migrants were ‘causing a blood poisoning’ of Germany.” I don’t imagine we’ve heard the last of this.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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