After Donald Trump spent the weekend reiterating his belief that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” echoing similar phrasing used by Adolf Hitler, some Republicans expressed mild unease with the former president’s rhetoric.
“I obviously don’t agree with that,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia said. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina called the comments “unhelpful,” while Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi added that he “certainly wouldn’t have said that.”
These weren’t exactly full-throated condemnations, but these rebukes at least acknowledged there was a problem with Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. As The Daily Beast noted overnight, Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York went in a very different direction.
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) sought out a marginally less offensive interpretation of Donald Trump’s declaration Saturday that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” claiming on CNN Monday that he was actually referring to Democratic policies that are doing the “poisoning.”
As difficult as this might be to believe, the GOP congresswoman told a national television audience, “When he said they are ‘poisoning,’ I think he was talking about the Democratic policies.” When CNN’s Abby Phillip tried to remind her guest about reality, Malliotakis said that Trump “never said ‘immigrants are poisoning.’”
In case there were any doubts, the New York Republican didn’t appear to be kidding. Her defense wasn’t offered with a wink and a nod. Malliotakis presented this defense as if the public was supposed to take it seriously.
To the extent that reality still has any meaning, it was in early October when the likely GOP presidential nominee first started echoing Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” telling a conservative outlet, in reference to migrants entering the United States, “Nobody has any idea where these people are coming from. … It is a very sad thing for our country….
Read the full article here