Trump repeats anti-immigrant 'poisoning the blood' remarks at rally: Latest – The Independent

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The former president approvingly quoted Putin and Orban as he revived ‘blood and soil’ statements
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Donald Trump returned to the campaign trial for a New Hampshire rally on Saturday where he revived “blood and soil” rhetoric, approvingly quoted Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban, and referred to January 6 defendants as “hostages”.
He repeated his statement that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of the country,” drawing warnings against his increasingly volatile rhetoric as he seeks the Republican nomination for president.
As the US approaches the third anniversary of the Capitol attack, fuelled by his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him, he said of people jailed in connection: “I don’t call them prisoners, I call them hostages.”
His visit came one day after a federal jury ruled that his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani owes almost $150m for smearing former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss by falsely accusing them of engaging in election fraud.
After his four-day defamation trial and a day of deliberation, eight jurors unanimously agreed that the former New York mayor should pay each plaintiff approximately $16m in compensation, an additional $20m each for intentional infliction of emotional distress, and a further $75m in punitive damages.
Mr Giuliani was unrepentant outside the courthouse and said he would appeal.
Rudy Giuliani was ordered to pay more than $148m for turning the lives of two election workers in Georgia upside down after spreading lies about their work that are still fuelling threats and racist abuse against them.
It’s a crucial blow to a prominent voice for election conspiracy theories, but the case has magnified the toll of those lies against the people who run the nation’s elections.
Those women are not alone, and those threats haven’t gone away. Giuliani is merely the highest profile figure yet facing accountability for them.
Proponents of the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from or rigged against Trump cast poll workers and Americans who keep our elections running as villains in a conspiracy against them.
Those lies not only fed mob violence on January 6, they are also animating Republican attempts to rewrite the rules of election administration and empower GOP officials to overturn results. And they are driving election workers out of their jobs, feeding a crisis for democracy to be primed for abuse by antidemocratic forces.
Analysis: Election lies cast poll workers who keep our elections running as villains in an antidemocratic conspiracy. It’s driving them out of their jobs, Alex Woodward writes
Melania Trump delivered remarks at a naturalisation ceremony at the National Archives in Washington DC on Friday, a rare – and ironic – public speaking appearance from the former first lady, whose husband is accused of withholding government documents from the very same agency.
Her appearance comes in the middle of a federal criminal case targeting Donald Trump and his allegedly illegal retention of Archives documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, where Ms Trump also lives.
He has also repeatedly attacked the National Archives and baselessly accused the archivists and civil servants of corruption and conspiracies against him following a protracted effort to get him to return documents in his possession.
She gave a speech at the National Archives after her husband’s attacks over the Mar-a-Lago case
The apology letters from three former Trump-connected attorneys who pleaded guilty in the Fulton County election interference case have surfaced – and two of them were only a single sentence.
Read them here:
Apology letters penned by Trump lawyers in Georgia election case
Donald Trump has offered financial support and pledged to pardon people convicted on charges connected to the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, when a mob fuelled by his own false narrative of election fraud broke into the halls of Congress.
He has embraced the January 6 Choir, a group of defendants who remain in a Washington DC jail for crimes that, according to federal prosecutors, “were so violent that their pretrial release would pose a danger to the public”.
Trump has also turned to calling jailed defendants “hostages”. He used that word again to describe them at a rally in New Hampshire on Saturday.
Federal prosecutors are turning to the former president’s well-documented support for rioters as evidence in a criminal case to argue that he knew what would happen if he failed to stop the mob from breaching the Capitol to stop the certification of 2020 election results.
More on that from The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg:
Prosecutors intend to use Mr Trump’s offers of pardons for convicted rioters to demonstrate how he signals that ‘the law does not apply to those who act at his urging’
At his Reno rally on Sunday night, Trump falsely claimed that migrants are “charging across the border by the hundreds of thousands” and pledged that “the invasion will end” if he is elected president.
He also promised “the largest deportation operation in American history” before coming up with a grossly inflated number of migrants who crossed the US-Mexico border during the Biden administration (”15 or 16 million people”).
Trump also falsely stated that thousands of Chinese immigrants, mostly men in their 20s, are flooding into the US. “The perfect age for an army,” he said.
For the second night in a row, he recited a song that was written by civil rights activist Oscar Brown in 1963 that later became a hit for soul singer Al Wilson.
Trump, who recites the lyrics as if he’s reading a book to a kindergarten class, claims that “The Snake” is a cautionary tale about allowing immigrants into the US. The song was intended as a civil rights metaphor for white society.
“Does that remind you of anything?” Trump asked the crowd after reading the lyrics.
Trump has not yet invoked his Mein Kampf-echoing statement that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Trump was introduced to the stage in Reno by Nevada’s GOP chair Michael McDonald, who was criminally charged days ago along with five other Republicans in the state for falsely pledging the state’s electoral votes to Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
At least five states have since launched criminal investigations into the fake elector scheme, and prosecutors in two states – Georgia and Michigan – have filed criminal charges against participants.
Trump stepped on the stage roughly one hour and 30 minutes late. It’s his second rally in as many days.
And that number will only get bigger.
Within eight months in 2023 alone, the financial fallout from 2020’s election lies reached more than $935m.
That figure does not include what could be at stake in ongoing lawsuits against Fox News, nor does it include the mounting legal costs surrounding the hundreds of cases connected to the January 6 and the attack on the US Capitol, nor the federal and state-level criminal cases against Trump and his allies for their alleged attempts to overturn 2020 election results, an effort fuelled by the ongoing false narrative that the outcome was stolen from and rigged against him.
Defamation lawsuits and multi-million dollar complaints target high-profile figures and media networks
Donald Trump is on course for a sweeping victory in the first contest of the 2024 presidential election as he leads his rivals by significant margins in a new poll.
The survey from CBS News, published on Sunday, will be one of the last measures of the Iowa GOP electorate before caucusing begins on 15 January.
Iowans are set to deliver the former president a commanding win, with his nearest competitor trailing him by 36 percentage points.
The Independent’s John Bowden reports:
New poll shows DeSantis’s ground game failing to yield results
Nikki Haley, who is challenging the former president for the Republican nomination in 2024, doesn’t want to weigh in on his multiple court cases.
She said that analysing their effects on his campaign would be “wasted energy”.
“I’m gonna let the courts figure that out,” she said. “I mean, the last thing you’re gonna see me do is weigh in or learn the details about any of his court cases because I can’t follow 91 charges.”
The former South Carolina governor and presidential hopeful said that it was up to the courts to decide whether Mr Trump deserved absolute immunity – which he is claiming he deserves
After testing his anti-immigrant agenda and increasingly violent rhetoric in his social media, in interviews and on campaign rally stages, Donald Trump returned to New Hampshire on Saturday with a phrase that echoes the pages of Mein Kampf and white supremacist manifestos.
The frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president has accelerated volatile, dehumanising language and embraced his label as a “day one dictator” while his allies and campaign laugh off and reject warnings from political opponents and critics about amplifying fascist language.
His statements were roundly condemned as a warning of his increasingly authoritarian rhetoric
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Donald Trump speaks a campaign rally in New Hampshire on 16 December.
AFP via Getty Images
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