Despite criticism from both high-ranking Republicans and Democrats, former President Donald Trump’s remarks about immigrants “poisoning the blood” of the country are making some support him more.
A new poll from The Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom asked Republican caucusgoers how they felt about the president’s remarks and whether or not it would make them more likely to support him.
The majority of respondents (42%) said they would be more likely to vote for the former president after the statements, while only 28% said they would be less likely to support him, and 29% said it didn’t matter.
Trump made his comments while speaking in New Hampshire over the weekend but doubled down on Tuesday while speaking in Iowa.
“They could be healthy, they could be very unhealthy, they could bring in disease that’s going to catch on in our country, but they do bring in crime, but they have them coming from all over the world,” Trump said at an event in Waterloo, Iowa, on Tuesday evening. “And they’re destroying the blood of our country. They’re destroying the fabric of our country.”
The remarks have been compared to Adolf Hitler’s, with many pointing to a similar point the Nazi dictator made in his book “Mein Kampf.”
“All great cultures of the past perished, only because the original creative race died out from blood poisoning,” the book says.
However, Trump pushed back against the rhetoric.
“They don’t like it when I said that, and I never read ‘Mein Kampf.’ They said, ‘Oh, Hitler said that in a much different way,’” the former president said.