Trump Doubles Down on Migrants ‘Poisoning’ the Country

Former President Donald J. Trump, in an interview broadcast Sunday, doubled down on his description of immigrants as “poisoning the blood” of the country, language that echoes Hitler.

“Why do you use words like ‘vermin’ and ‘poisoning of the blood’?” Howard Kurtz, the media critic and interviewer, asked on Fox News. “The press, as you know, immediately reacts to that by saying, ‘Well, that’s the kind of language that Hitler and Mussolini used.’”

“Because our country isbeing poisoned,” Mr. Trump responded.

He also repeated a claim he has made many times: that the migrants crossing the southern border are criminals flooding in from prisons and mental institutions.

Evidence does not support that. According to border officials, most migrants are families fleeing violence and poverty, and despite a few high-profile cases, data show no increase in crime attributable to immigration. Crime rates, including that of murder, declined last year.

“We can be nice about it, we can talk about, ‘Oh, I want to be politically correct,’” Mr. Trump said. “But we have people coming in from prisons and jails, long-term murderers, people with sentences that the rest of their lives they’re going to spend in some jail in some country that many people have never even heard of. They’re all being released into our country.”

He went on: “These are people at the highest level of crime, and then you have mental institutions and insane asylums — I always say the difference is one is ‘Silence of the Lambs,’ you know, it’s a mental institution on steroids, OK? — and those mental institutions and insane asylums are being emptied out into the United States, and then you have terrorists pouring in at levels we have never seen before.”