Trump defends controversial comments about immigrants poisoning the nation’s blood at Iowa rally

WATERLOO, Iowa — Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday defended his comments about migrants crossing the southern border “poisoning the blood” of America, and he reinforced the message while denying any similarities to fascist writings others had noted. “I never read ‘Mein Kampf,’” Trump said at a campaign rally in Waterloo, Iowa, referencing Adolf Hitler’s fascist manifesto. Immigrants in the U.S. illegally, Trump said Tuesday, are “destroying the blood of our country, they’re destroying the fabric of our country.” In the speech to more than 1,000 supporters from a podium flanked by Christmas trees in red MAGA hats, Trump responded to mounting criticism about his anti-immigrant “blood” purity rhetoric over the weekend. The former president has long used inflammatory language about immigrants coming to the U.S., dating back to his campaign launch in 2015, when he said immigrants from Mexico are “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.” But Trump has espoused increasingly authoritarian messages in his third campaign, vowing to renew and add to his effort to bar citizens from certain Muslim-majority countries, and to expand “ ideological screening ” for people immigrating to the U.S. Sen. JD Vance, a Republican from Ohio, lashed out at a reporter asking about Trump’s “poisoning the blood” comments, defending them as a reference to overdoses from fentanyl smuggled over the border.