Donald Trump has once again evoked Nazi rhetoric.
At a rally in Aurora, Colorado, on Friday, the Republican presidential nominee weaponized violent and dehumanizing language to describe immigrants, referring to them as the “enemy from within” while advocating for harsher criminal punishments for the vulnerable demographic, including promising the death penalty.
“But I protect you from outside enemies. But you know I always say, we have the outside enemies, so you can say China, you can say Russia, you can say Kim Jong Un … if you have a smart president it’s no problem,” Trump said. “It’s the enemy from within.
“All the scum we have to deal with that hate our country,” he continued. “That’s a bigger enemy than China and Russia.… Everyday Americans like Cindy are living in fear all because Kamala Harris decided to empty the slums and prison cells of Caracas, and many other places. Happening all over the world.”
That is, on its face, untrue. But according to Trump, that (falsely) means crime is down in the rest of the world as a result.
“Every country, you know, prison populations all over the world are down. Crime all over the world is down. Because they take the world’s criminals, gang members, drug dealers, and they deposit them into the United States. Bus after bus after bus,” Trump said to a cacophony of boos from the crowd of his supporters.
The world’s prison population has, statistically, gone up by more than 25 percent since the year 2000, according to data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
“They took the criminals out of Caracas, and they put them along your border, and they said if you ever come back, we’re going to kill you,” Trump said.
“Think of that!” he continued. “We have to live with these animals. But we won’t live with them for long!”
At that, one person in the crowd shouted, “Kill them!”
In the same speech, Trump called for the expeditious “removal of these savage gangs,” promising that, if elected, he would appoint “elite squads” to conduct mass deportations. He also vowed to enforce the death penalty for “any migrant that kills an American citizen or a law enforcement officer.”