White House calls out Trump’s immigrant comments as ‘fascist’

The White House condemned former President Donald Trump for trying to "tear Americans apart with hate and cruelty" by saying immigrants were "poisoning the blood of our country."

"Echoing the grotesque rhetoric of fascists and violent white supremacists and threatening to oppress those who disagree with the government are dangerous attacks on the dignity and rights of all Americans, on our democracy, and on public safety," White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said Sunday. "It’s the opposite of everything we stand for as Americans.”

The statement came a day after the Biden campaign also took aim at Trump and compared his caustic remarks — made during a campaign rally — to those of Adolf 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 Saturday evening.

Earlier, Trump had ratcheted up his already inflammatory rhetoric on immigrants at a rally in New Hampshire.

“They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” the former president said. “They’ve poisoned mental institutions and prisons all over the world. Not just in South America, not just the three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world they’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia.”

Trump also further tried to paint President Joe Biden as an authoritarian following criticism of his own remarks about being a dictator “on day one” of a potential future administration.

“Even Vladimir Putin … says that Biden’s, and this is a quote, politically motivated persecution of his political rival is very good for Russia because it shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy,” Trump said.

Trump also praised Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in his remarks.

Trump has previously referred to his political enemies as "vermin," drawing comparisons with dehumanizing language typically used by dictators and authoritarians.

The New Hampshire crowd cheered as Trump railed against Biden, blaming the sitting president for his legal troubles.

“They [are] weaponizing law enforcement for high level election interference because we’re beating them so badly in the polls,” Trump said.

In a recent Wall Street Journal poll, Trump topped Biden by a 4 percent margin, the latest in a series of polls forecasting trouble for Biden.

“[Trump] is betting he can win this election by scaring and dividing this country,” Moussa said in the campaign statement. “He’s wrong. In 2020, Americans chose President Biden’s vision of hope and unity over Trump’s vision of fear and division — and they’ll do the same next November.”