Trump repeats anti-immigrant ‘poisoning the blood’ remarks at rally: Latest

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.

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.

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:

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.

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:

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.”

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.

After speaking in New Hampshire on Saturday, Donald Trump will speak to supporters in Reno, Nevada at 2pm local time on Sunday, as his campaign mounts an aggressive multi-state push ahead of Republican primary elections early next year.

His campaign also hopes to blunt signs of momentum among his GOP rivals, including Nikki Haley, who is campaigning in Iowa on Sunday.

Trump’s visit to Nevada comes days after the state’s attorney general announced criminal charges against several Trump loyalists, including the state’s GOP chair, 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 their subversion, and prosecutors in two states – Georgia and Michigan – have filed criminal charges against participants.

More on the case in Nevada: