An attack by former United States President Donald Trump on African and Asian immigrants has generated angry reactions worldwide, GBENGA OLONINIRAN writes
Former United States President Donald Trump has come under backlash following his comments on Saturday at a rally in New Hampshire that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Specifically, Trump said immigrants from Africa, Asia, and others from all over the world were flooding the US and feared crimes and terrorism would be on the rise.
Trump told the crowd on Saturday that immigrants “from all over the world” are “pouring into the country,” reiterating a phrase CNN reported he used previously that sparked an outcry from the Anti-Defamation League.
According to the CNN report in October 2023, Trump had said, “Nobody has ever seen anything like we’re witnessing right now. It is a very sad thing for our country.” He told the right-leaning news site The National Pulse in a video interview. “It’s poisoning the blood of our country. It’s so bad, and people are coming in with disease. People are coming in with every possible thing that you could have.”
Reiterating this on Saturday, Trump said, “We got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done.” “They poison… mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America … but all over the world. They’re coming into our country, from Africa, from Asia, all over the world,” he said in the viral video that has equally generated mixed reactions.
Trump, who is likely to be the Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential race for the White House, while appearing to be taking a swipe at President Joe Biden’s administration, also noted, “They’re pouring into our country. Nobody’s even looking at them. They just come in. The crime is going to be tremendous. The terrorism is going to be… And and we built a tremendous piece of the wall and then we’re going to build more.”
In 2018, news reports emerged that Trump called Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries “shithole countries” in a meeting with Congressional leaders about immigration policy in the White House. He allegedly went ahead to say he preferred immigrants from Norway and Asia as they helped America economically. Trump denied referring to African nations as shithole countries but said that he used tough words to describe them.
NBC NEWS reported Sunday that following Trump’s comments, the Biden campaign released a statement criticising the ex-president’s remarks.
“Donald Trump channeled his role models as he parroted Adolf Hitler, praised Kim Jong Un, and quoted Vladimir Putin while running for president on a promise to rule as a dictator and threaten American democracy. Trump is not shying away from his plan to lock up millions of people into detention camps and continues to lie about that time when Joe Biden obliterated him by over seven million votes three years ago,” the Biden campaign said.
One of Trump’s rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, Chris Christie, also called Trump’s remarks “disgusting” on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“He’s disgusting, and what he’s doing is dog-whistle to Americans who feel absolutely under stress and strained from the economy and from the conflicts around the world, and he’s dog-whistling to blame it on people from areas that don’t look like us,” Christie said. “The other problem with this is the Republicans who are saying this is OK.”
He went on to criticise fellow Republican rival Nikki Haley for saying Trump was fit to be president.
“You’re telling me that someone who says immigrants are poisoning the blood of this country, someone who says Vladimir Putin is a character witness, is fit to be president of the United States, was the right person at the right time. Nikki Haley should be ashamed of herself. She’s part of the problem because she’s enabling him.”
The Guardian reported that in November, Trump was widely condemned for calling his opponents “vermin”, a language that echoed that used historically by dictators and authoritarians. The report further disclosed that former Republican speaker of the House Paul Ryan called Trump an “authoritarian narcissist.”
NBC disclosed that Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about being compared to Hitler but noted Trump had made criticising the handling of America’s southern border a focal point of his campaign and frequently talked about the flow of immigrants into the US.
Trump’s allies in Congress have made immigration a top priority and are demanding new policies be created to handle the border before Republicans will approve additional funding for Ukraine or Israel, both of which are waging wars with backing from the US, the report adds.
Knocking Trump’s comments, former minister of foreign affairs, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, said Trump was echoing anti-immigration comments from Germany as well as by Henry Kissinger.
According to him, both Kissinger and Trump families were immigrants themselves.
Prof. Akinyemi in an interview with our correspondent on Sunday said, “These two came from immigrant families themselves. Well, Trump was born in the US but his parents were immigrants and Kissinger’s parents were immigrants from Germany. He was born in Germany. And when you also look at right-wing politicians, in Britain for example (including some Nigerians), they have become anti-immigrants and yet they are immigrants themselves. I think we have to see this as a syndrome of immigrants turning on their backgrounds in order to make themselves acceptable to their country of adoption. It’s a syndrome. You’re turning on your background and it is very well known psychologically. So I’m not surprised, but I would have expected that people like Kissinger with his intellect would at least get over this or if he couldn’t get over it, he would suppress it rather than give it … legitimacy.” He noted that this was dangerous.
A former Nigerian Ambassador to Mexico, Ogbole Amedu-Ode, said in an interview with The PUNCH on Sunday said such a statement was not new from Trump and it only meant that Nigerians should fix their own country.
Amedu said, “Trump saying such a thing is not new. It is typically Trump. He has always been like that. You recall when he said people should go back to their ‘shit hole’ countries. And one of Trump’s doctrines was America first in everything. On a general note, you would discover that Caucasian Americans (white Americans) have been very paranoid about the increasing population of people of other colours – people of African descent and other races in the US demographic dispensation. So, that discomfort, that feeling of gradually becoming a minority in a country ‘called their own’ is responsible for such comments from characters like Donald Trump. So for me, it’s not a surprise. It’s just the fact that somebody like that (can be) in power and he’s still considered to be in the running for the Republican ticket.
“What such comments tell me is that we should get down and fix our country so that migration to other countries will be minimal.”
The President, International Human Rights and Dignity Defenders Forum, Comr. David Omeike described Trump’s statement as unfortunate.
Omeike said, “Such a statement coming from him is a bit unfortunate. The truth is that he cannot change the standing pattern of life in America. He’s not the first president in that country and not the first to contest and he would not be the last. But it’s good for the sake of posterity that he minds his utterances. He forgets to understand that such statements will only end up demarketing him. Nigerians over there are many so the more he tries to still come up with that racial discrimination, the more he thwarts his chances.”
