Trump doubles down on immigrant 'blood' remark, says he 'never read Mein Kampf'

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday doubled down on his widely criticized comments about immigration by suggesting that people crossing the border illegally into the United States are "destroying the blood of our country.”

"They dump them on the border, and they pour into our country, and nobody said to check them," Trump said at a campaign event in Waterloo, Iowa.

"They're destroying the blood of our country. That's what they're doing. They're destroying our country."

The remark comes after Trump said at a rally in New Hampshire on Saturday that immigrants entering the U.S. are “poisoning the blood of our country."

“They let — I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump said on Saturday.

Trump repeated the claim on Truth Social on Saturday night, saying in all caps, "Illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of our nation. They're coming from prisons, from mental institutions — from all over the world."