Ex-President says remarks aren’t racist, slams claims he’s read Mein Kampf and says border crossers are ‘filling our schools’

• ‘I know nothing about Hitler,’ Trump said in an interview
• He said he never read Mein Kampf
• Trump denied any racist sentiment after critics said he parroted the Fuhrer

Former President Donald Trump said in an interview he knows ‘nothing’ about Hitler, as he once again repeated comments that immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood’ of the nation, flatly rejecting rhetorical comparisons to the Fuhrer.

He was asked about critics saying he used ‘Hitlerian language’ in his repeated use of the ‘poisoning’ language to describe migrants. The German dictator wrote about the ‘poisoning’ of German blood by the Jews in his 1925 manifesto that preceded the Holocaust. Trump has refused to back down, using the language at campaign rallies amid the fury. 

‘No, and I never knew that Hitler said it, either, by the way. And I never read Mein Kampf. They said I read Mein Kampf. These are people that are disinformation horrible people that we’re dealing with. I never read Mein Kampf,’ Trump said. 

Interviewer and conservative talk host Hugh Hewitt then asked Trump: ‘So you intend no racist sentiment whatsoever when you say poisoning our blood?’

‘Dear, no,’ Trump responded. 

He cited his support among African American and Hispanic voters, which are running above GOP benchmarks.

He then went further, saying he knew ‘nothing’ about Hitler. 

‘First of all, I know nothing about Hitler. I’m not a student of Hitler. I never read his works. They say that he said something about blood. He didn’t say it the way I said it, either, by the way, It’s a very different kind of a statement.’

He then repeated some of his warnings about flows of migrants into the country, during a week when the nation experienced record migrant encounters at the southern border.

‘What I’m saying when I talk about people coming into our country is they are destroying our country. This country is, we have prisoners coming in. We have mental patients coming in by the thousands, really, by the millions, because you take a look. I believe the number will be 15 million people, maybe more than that, by the time this lunatic leaves office. 15 million people, and he’s destroying our country,’ he said.’

Trump’s repeated comments about migrants poisoning the blood of the nation and his insistence he is unfamiliar with Hitler’s use of similar language has resurfaced comments by his late first wife, Ivana Trump, who claimed Trump owned a book of Hitler’s speeches that he kept in a cabinet at his bedside.

The quote came from a 1990 Vanity Fair interview. A reporter asked Trump about it, and the then real estate baron said his friend had given him a copy of the famous book. ‘I did give him a book about Hitler. But it was My New Order, Hitler’s speeches, not Mein Kampf,’ the friend, Marty Davis, said.  

Hewitt also gave Trump an opportunity to further clarify his ‘dictator’ comment during an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, where he said he said he wouldn’t abuse power ‘except for Day One.’

‘If you are reelected, will you peacefully surrender power at the end of your second term as required by the Constitution?’ Hewitt asked him.

‘Of course,’ Trump replied, before speaking of leaving office in 2021 following his election overturn effort that has him battling an indictment in federal court in D.C.

‘And I did that this time. And I’ll tell you what. The election was rigged, and we have plenty of evidence of it. But I did it anyway. The other question you should ask is you should ask the other side will you cheat on the elections, because the only way we’re going to lose is if they cheat on the elections,’ Trump said.

As he has in recent speeches, Trump repeated his ‘blood’ comments about immigrants, bringing up terrorists and mentally ill people.

‘When you look at it, and you look at what’s coming in, we have, from all over the world, not one group, they’re coming in from Asia, from Africa, from South America. They’re coming from all over the world. They’re coming from prisons. They’re coming from mental institutions and insane asylums. They’re terrorists. Absolutely, that’s poisoning our country,’ Trump said.

‘That’s poisoning the blood of our country. And that’s what’s happening.’

Then he said the migrants don’t speak English.

‘They have people coming in, we don’t even know what the language is that they speak. We have nobody that speaks the language. And they’re loading up our classes. We’re loading up our classes, our school classes, with children that don’t speak the language. They don’t speak our language, and nobody knows what’s going on. No, we are poisoning our country. We’re poisoning the blood of our country, and you have people coming in, think of it, mental institutions all over the world are being emptied out into the United States. Jails and prisons are being emptied out into the United States. This is poisoning our country.’

The Biden campaign has been hammering Trump for his use of the language, and Vice President Kamala Harris joined the condemnation this week.

‘I was raised knowing that there will be some people who will use their voice in a way that is meant to dehumanize, meant to suggest that the vast majority of us don’t have anything in common, when, in fact, the vast majority of us have more in common than what separates us,’ she said.

‘And I would interpret it, I think, then as I do now, which is, it is language that is meant to divide us. It is language that I think people have rightly found similar to the language of Hitler,’ she said. 

‘And I think it’s just critically important that we remind each other, including our children, that the true measure of the strength of a leader is based not on who they beat down, but who they lift up.’