Host Jake Tapper: “Leading this hour, with four weeks until Iowans cast the nation’s first votes in the 2024 presidential race, the dehumanizing rhetoric of Adolf Hitler is once again alive and well on the national political stage. This time, of course, in the United States, this time, given life by former president and current Republican presidential front runner, Donald Trump, whose thoughts on immigrants were made shockingly crystal clear over the weekend.”
[Clip of Donald Trump]
Tapper: “South America, Africa, Asia. No mention of Europe in Mr. Trump’s list. And he uses the term ‘poisoning the blood of our country.’ ‘Poisoning the blood of our country.’ If you were to open up a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, you would find the Nazi leader describing the mixing of non-Germans with Germans as poisoning. ‘The Jew,’ Hitler wrote, quote, ‘poisons the blood of others.’ This, according to Hitler, posed an existential threat to Germany because, quote, ‘all great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning,’ unquote. There’s really no other way to say it. Donald Trump’s language mirrors this directly….It was rhetoric. Mere words, but it dovetailed nicely with a very racist, great replacement theory that Jews are funding migrants to come to the United States to replace the white people of the United States. It’s a sick, twisted conspiracy theory. But they’re just words, right? A conspiracy theory, just words. But they become, to some sick minds, calls to action and right in the middle of that campaign. October 27th, 2018. the Tree of Life synagogue massacre. Eleven Jews killed. The deadliest, deadliest attack on Jewish Americans in the United States history. But even that shooting did not stop Trump from continuing to fuel these deranged rumors. Just days later, he suggested that wealthy financier George Soros, who is Jewish, may have been actually paying for the migrant caravan. No record of this. No proof of this. But he said it anyway.”
[Clip of Trump]
...
Tapper: “Rhetoric inspired bloodshed meanwhile continued. So that was 2018. Flash forward, August 3rd, 2019. The El Paso Walmart shooting, 23 people killed. And this sick white replacement theory continues. May 14th, 2022, the supermarket shooting in Buffalo, New York, 10 killed. All of those murders were inspired by these mere words. As my friend and colleague Van Jones points out, presidents have a way of calling the American people to act. John F. Kennedy called us to serve. Ask not what your country can do for you. Called us to serve. He formed the Peace Corps. Ronald Reagan ushered in an era of national pride and patriotism. What exactly is Donald Trump calling us to do?”
— CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper, December 18, 2023.
