Trump Is Going All In on the Hitler Vibes

Donald Trump acknowledged on Tuesday that his anti-immigrant rhetoric is being compared to Hitler’s—and then he showed how little that bothered him, repeating much of the same vile language.

“They’re destroying the blood of our country. That’s what they’re doing. They’re destroying our country,” said Trump during a campaign rally in Iowa, echoing language from Hitler’s Nazi manifesto. “They don’t like it when I said that—and I never read Mein Kampf.”

“They could be healthy, they could be very unhealthy, they could bring in disease that’s going to catch on in our country, but they do bring in crime, but they have them coming from all over the world,” the GOP front-runner continued. “And they’re destroying the blood of our country. They’re destroying the fabric of our country.”

Trump has been dipping his toe into fascist rhetoric for years, but in a couple of Veteran’s Day speeches and same-day posts on TruthSocial, he described his Democratic rivals as “vermin”—a word Hitler regularly used to dehumanize his political enemies and the Jewish people.

Then, during rallies last weekend, Trump told supporters that undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country” and described it as “an invasion ... like a military invasion. Drugs, criminals, gang members, and terrorists are pouring into our country at record levels. We’ve never seen anything like it. They’re taking over our cities.”

The former president has outright admitted that he would abuse his powers if reinstated to the White House. During a Fox News–hosted town hall earlier this month, Trump said that he wouldn’t be a dictator “except for day one.”

And yet, Republicans seem to like this authoritarian lean. According to a Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa poll, nearly half of surveyed Republicans noted that Trump’s recent caustic language would make them more likely to back him in the upcoming election.

According to the poll, 42 percent of likely GOP caucusgoers said that Trump’s “poisoning the blood” comment made them more likely to support him, while a hair more—43 percent—said that his references to “vermin” made them feel just as supportive.

One of the respondents, 71-year-old June Koelker, told the Des Moines Register that Trump’s immigration plan made her more likely to back him, although she disagreed with his “poisoning” comment.

“The ones who are coming in now, with no children, no wife, no family, dressed fine as wine, we’re handing them money and giving them air traffic anyplace in the country,” Koelker told the paper. “And don’t you wonder—they’re all military age—what they’re here for? Our country is not safe now.”