His absence from US presidential candidate debates notwithstanding, Donald Trump remains the favourite to score the Republican Party nomination for the 2024 US elections. The former president’s election rally speech yesterday in New Hampshire was described on social media as “classic Trump” — he told his packed audience that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”.
This statement came not long after Trump had used the word “vermin”, referring to certain segments of the American population. In response to yesterday’s rally speech, US-based writer and television personality Mehdi Hasan tweeted that what Trump said was akin to “Hitler rhetoric”.
During his presidency, Trump had added a barrier — nicknamed the “Trump Wall” — between the United States and Mexico to stop immigrants.
In his speech yesterday, he also blamed immigrants from Africa and Asia for “pouring into our country”. He warned his listeners that “crime” and “terrorism” would see a “tremendous” increase as a result, adding that “we got a lot of work to do”.
Trump says “nobody is even looking at ’em”
The Guardian reported that in his previous rally, Trump had threatened to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections”.
Implying that was there no control in current America over who came in and did what, Trump said that “nobody is even looking at ’em”, meaning at the immigrants.
According to the Guardian report, Trump told his supporters that he would “restore and expand” the travel restrictions that he had implemented in his term as president — in 2017, his main targets had been immigrants from some Muslim-majority countries and some African nations.
Trump also told yesterday’s rally audience that all illegal immigrants coming into the US would be subjected to a “strong ideological screening”, if he were back in power.