CNN’s Jake Tapper UNLEASHES on Trump’s Nazi-Echoing Speech in Stunning Must-See Commentary

CNN anchor Jake Tapper tore into ex-President Donald Trump’s weekend speech in a stunning commentary, not just comparing it to the language of Adolf Hitler but laying out the violent consequences of such rhetoric.

Trump is under fire once again after he delivered another Hitler-echoing rant at a rally in Durham, New Hampshire on Saturday in which he accused several groups of non-White immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Tapper hammered Trump on Sunday over other parts of the speech, but on Monday’s edition of CNN’s The Lead he began the second hour of his show with a frankly jaw-dropping video essay laying waste to Trump over a history of such behavior:

Leading this hour, with four weeks until Ohioans cast the nation’s first votes in the 2024 presidential race, the dehumanizing rhetoric of Adolf Hitler IS once again alive and well on the national political stage. This time, of course, in the United States, this time, given life by former president and current Republican presidential front runner, Donald Trump, whose thoughts on immigrants were made shockingly crystal clear over the weekend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done. They poisoned mental institutions and prisons all over the world. Not just in South America, not just the three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world they’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world. They’re pouring into our country. Nobody’s even looking at them. They just come in. The crime is going to be tremendous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: South America, Africa, Asia. No mention of Europe in Mr. Trump’s list. And he uses the term poisoning the blood of our country. Poisoning the blood of our country. If you were to open up a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, you would find the Nazi leader describing the mixing of non-Germans with Germans as poisoning. The Jew, Hitler wrote, quote, “poisons the blood of others.”

This, according to Hitler, posed an existential threat to Germany because, quote, “all great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning,” unquote. There’s really no other way to say it. Donald Trump’s language mirrors this directly. And this wasn’t a one-off.

Trump then went to Nevada on Sunday and used the same scare tactic with zero evidence that migrants are largely coming to the United States from prisons and from mental institutions. He made the campaign promise to begin the largest deportation of undocumented immigrants in American history.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We must use any and all resources needed to stop the invasion of our country, including moving thousands of troops currently stationed overseas in countries that don’t like us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Strengthening the border is one thing. This is entirely another. Mr. Trump said he would remove migrants from the country by invoking part of the Alien and Sedition Acts. That’s a set of quite constitutionally questionable laws from 1798 passed under the John Adams administration, three of the four acts expired when Thomas Jefferson became president except for a modified version of one, the Alien Enemies Act which authorizes the president to detain, relocate or deport non-citizens in times of war.

And yes, this has been used and abused in modern times including during World War II. The public reactions to Trump’s latest words on immigration have, not surprisingly, been mostly muted, aside from former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who told me that those words were, quote, “disgusting.” Sitting Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who used to be quite active in trying to push immigration reform, he doesn’t seem overly concerned.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): We’re talking about language. I could care less what language people use as long as we get it right. I believe in legal immigration. I have no animosity toward people trying to come to our country. I have animosity against terrorists and against drug dealers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Graham is dismissing words from Donald Trump as inconsequential. And you know, maybe they are to you, maybe they are to me, but we have seen Mr. Trump’s words become calls to action on January 6, 2021, of course. But don’t forget the climate of the 2018 midterm elections. The Donald Trump Fox warnings about this caravan of migrants, terrifying migrants, funded by George Soros, they said.

It was rhetoric. Mere words, but it dovetailed nicely with a very racist, great replacement theory that Jews are funding migrants to come to the United States to replace the white people of the United States. It’s a sick, twisted conspiracy theory. But they’re just words, right? A conspiracy theory, just words. But they become, to some sick minds, calls to action and right in the middle of that campaign.

October 27th, 2018. the Tree of Life synagogue massacre. Eleven Jews killed. The deadliest, deadliest attack on Jewish Americans in the United States history. But even that shooting did not stop Trump from continuing to fuel these deranged rumors. Just days later, he suggested that wealthy financier George Soros, who is Jewish, may have been actually paying for the migrant caravan. No record of this. No proof of this. But he said it anyway.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I wouldn’t be surprised. I wouldn’t be surprised. I wouldn’t.

UNKNOWN: George Soros.

TRUMP: I don’t know who, but I wouldn’t be surprised. A lot of people say yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: A lot of people say yes. Rhetoric inspired bloodshed meanwhile continued. So that was 2018. Flash forward, August 3rd, 2019. The El Paso Walmart shooting, 23 people killed. And this sick white replacement theory continues. May 14th, 2022, the supermarket shooting in Buffalo, New York, 10 killed. All of those murders were inspired by these mere words.

As my friend and colleague Van Jones points out, presidents have a way of calling the American people to act. John F. Kennedy called us to serve. Ask not what your country can do for you. Called us to serve. He formed the Peace Corps. Ronald Reagan ushered in an era of national pride and patriotism. What exactly is Donald Trump calling us to do?

Watch above via CNN.

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