It’s been about two months since Donald Trump published a Veterans Day message in which he vowed to “root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country.” The phrasing had unsettling historical antecedents: Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini used eerily similar dehumanization rhetoric.
But the former president didn’t stop there. Soon after, the likely Republican nominee started peddling a line, with unnerving frequency, which said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” echoing similar phrasing used by Hitler.
Would GOP voters endorse such talk? We didn’t have to wait too long to find out.
In mid-December, a Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa Poll found that 42% of likely GOP caucusgoers in the Hawkeye State said Trump’s “poisoning the blood” rhetoric made them more likely to support the former president’s candidacy, not less.
As striking as the results were, the survey was limited to Republicans in one state who were likely to participate in a nominating contest. The latest CBS poll asked a similar question to a broader group of participants, and the results were arguably even more discouraging.
As Donald Trump dominates the GOP nomination race and some of his inflammatory comments find favor with the party faithful, CBS News measured how the public feels about his “poisoning the blood” language. A striking number of voters agree with this description of immigrants who enter the U.S. illegally, and among Republicans, associating the remarks with Trump himself makes them even likelier to agree.
In the CBS News/YouGov survey, roughly half the respondents were asked about the “poisoning the blood” rhetoric without attributing the language to a specific candidate, while the other half were told it was Trump who made the comments.
According to the results, 72% of Republicans at the national level agreed with the anti-immigrant language when the…
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