WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump on Friday defended his recent remarks about immigrants “poisoning the blood” of America, saying he never knew it was language used by Adolf Hitler.
Trump’s assertion that he didn’t know Hitler used similar phrasing in his manifesto, “Mein Kampf,” came after the former president made the comments last weekend, drawing comparisons to the genocidal Nazi dictator — and then repeated the term several more times.
In an interview Friday, conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked Trump if he used “poisoning the blood” in the same way Hitler meant it — that Jewish blood cannot be part of German blood.
“No, and I never knew that Hitler said it, either, by the way,” Trump said. “And I never read ‘Mein Kampf.’ They said I read ‘Mein Kampf.’ These are people that are disinformation, horrible people that we’re dealing with. I never read ‘Mein Kampf,'” the former president added.
Asked whether he intended the term to have a racist sentiment, Trump said, “Dear, no.”
“First of all, I know nothing about Hitler. I’m not a student of Hitler. I never read his works,” Trump added. “They say that he said something about blood. He didn’t say it the way I said it, either, by the way, it’s a very different kind of a statement.”
Trump then continued to use the term during the interview with Hewitt, saying it means a certain group of people is ruining the country — echoing how Hitler used the term when speaking about Jews.
“They are poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump said about immigrants. “And I’m not talking about a specific group, and I never read ‘Mein Kampf,’ and I have no idea what Hitler said other than I’ve seen on the news. And that’s a very entirely different thing than what I’m saying. They’re pouring, they’re destroying our country. They’re coming in from every continent, and we have no idea, we have no idea who they are, what they represent. Are they from jails? Are they from prisons? And I will tell…
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