On Monday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump dominated the headlines once again due to another controversial comment. When talking about immigrants with criminal records, a topic that has been trending on the GOP's agenda as of late, he mentioned that many of them are murderers "happily living in the United States" and that he believes "it's in their genes, and we have a lot of bad genes in the country right now."
The comment quickly went viral, provoking indignation in hundreds of social media users who compared Trump to Adolf Hitler and labeled his insinuations "pure Nazi propaganda". The White House also joined the chorus of condemnations, with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre addressing the issue during a briefing with reporters.
"That type of language, it's hateful, it's disgusting, it's inappropriate, it has no place in our country," said Jean Pierre. "This comes from the same person that said vile statements about migrants poisoning the blood of our country. That's disgusting," she added.
Pierre was referencing comments made by Trump back in December during a rally in New Hampshire in which he said:
"They let — I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They're poisoning the blood of our country."
Trump doubled down on the comments later that day on a post on Truth Social: "illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of our nation. They're coming from prisons, from mental institutions — from all over the world."
Trump's comments are related to a post shared in late September by Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Tex.) in which he published a letter from acting ICE Director P.J. Lechleitner with a caption from Gonzales that read: "As of July 21, 2024, there were 662,566 noncitizens with criminal histories on ICE's national docket—13,099 criminally convicted MURDERS!"
However, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a statement claiming that Republicans are "misinterpreting" the ICE data, as the figures actually go back decades and "includes people who entered the country over the past 40 year or more" and includes people that, while not jailed by ICE, are currently incarcerated by federal, state or local authorities.
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