Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) made it clear on Sunday that he does not care that Donald Trump channeled Adolf Hitler at his rally Saturday night when he said immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the United States, just as long as it helps Republicans get their immigration message across.
“They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump said at a rally in Durham, New Hampshire on Saturday. “That’s what they’ve done. They’ve poisoned mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just 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.”
Graham dismissed Trump’s remarks in an interview with ‘Meet the Press’ on Sunday, saying a majority of Americans “believe the border is broken”
“But what about his language, senator? That ‘poisoning the blood,'”host Kristen Welker asked.
“Yeah. I’m worried about an outcome,” Graham said. “He is right to want – he had the border secured the lowest in 40 years in December of 2020. To the Biden administration, you’re talking about Donald Trump’s language as you sat on the sidelines and allowed the country to be invaded. 172 people on the terrorist watch list have come on your watch.”
“Just on the language, though. You have endorsed former President Trump. Are you comfortable with him using words like that?” Welker pressed.
“You know, we’re talking about language. I could care less what language people use as long as we get it right,” Graham responded.
After Trump’s remarks, the Biden administration criticized him for “parroting Adolf Hitler”.
“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 2024 spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement to Politico.
Graham argued on Sunday that the Biden campaign’s focus on Trump’s language is a losing strategy.
“If you’re talking about the language Trump uses rather than trying to fix it, that’s a losing strategy for the Biden administration,” he said. “I think the [former] president has a way of talking, sometimes, I disagree with. But he actually delivered on the border. People are looking for results. If the only thing you want to talk about on immigration is the way Donald Trump talks, you’re missing a lot.”
The term “blood poisoning” was used by Hitler in Mein Kampf to criticize immigration and race mixing.
“All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning,” Hitler wrote in his 1925 book.
