Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, was confronted on Sunday over criticisms that Donald Trump's recent comments on immigration had "parroted Adolf Hitler."
The former president has been accused of echoing the Nazi leader following remarks about immigrants he made at a rally on Saturday in Durham, New Hampshire. The former president, who is the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, claimed immigrants are "poisoning the blood" of the United States during his speech.
"They're poisoning the blood of our country," Trump said. "They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world. Not just in South America, not just in 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."
Following Trump's remarks, President Joe Biden's campaign quickly denounced him, saying he had "parroted 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. Trump is "betting he can win this election by scaring and dividing this country. He's wrong."
Meanwhile in a Sunday interview with NBC News' Meet The Press with host Kristen Welker, Graham was asked about Trump's recent remarks and the accusation from the Biden campaign that he's "parroting Adolf Hitler."
In response, Graham, a Trump ally, initially avoided answering the question before telling Welker he "could care less" about Trump's choice of words.
"We're talking about language. I could care less what language people use as long as we get it right. If you think you're going to win the debate on illegal immigration by picking a line out of the Trump speech, most Americans understand the game has to change, that we're under threat, that we're going to get attacked, that our border has completely been obliterated."
He added: "If you're talking about the language Trump uses rather than trying to fix it, that's a losing strategy for the Biden administration."
However, the senator later appeared to subtly rebuke the remarks, telling Welker that Trump "has a way of talking sometimes I disagree with, but he actually delivered on the border. If the only thing you want to talk about on immigration is the way Donald Trump talks, you're missing a lot."
Newsweek has reached out to Graham and Trump via email for comment.
Trump's comments follow a previous pattern of language that has been widely criticized.
In early December, during a town hall with Fox News host Sean Hannity, the former president faced questions from Hannity about whether or not he'd be a "dictator" during a potential second term. Trump, after deflecting the question, said he would only be a dictator on "day one" to implement some of his policies, but would not abuse his power in the White House.
Meanwhile in November, Trump vowed to "root out" his liberal opponents while calling them "vermin" in social media posts and in a speech that month in New Hampshire while on the campaign trial.
The remarks include a Veteran's Day post on Truth Social in which Trump pledged to "root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country." Critics have suggested the language used by the former president is reminiscent of that used by Hitler and Italian fascist Benito Mussolini against their enemies.
Since then, Biden has used Trump's remarks to suggest the Republican is a danger to democracy and should not be allowed back in the White House.
However, reacting to the criticism, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung previously told Newsweek: "Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their sad, miserable existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House."
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Natalie Venegas is a Weekend Reporter at Newsweek based in New York. Her focus is reporting on education, social justice ... Read more
