‘This is a dog whistle’: Chris Christie blasts Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis over Hitleresque ‘blood poisoning’ comments

Image via Jesse Scheckner.

At least one Republican presidential candidate is condemning Donald Trump for comments the former President is making on the campaign trail that sound lifted right out of “Mein Kampf.”

At a campaign stop in New Hampshire, Chris Christie bashed Trump for repeatedly saying — and then defending having said — that undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Many have pointed out that Adolf Hitler used a similar term, “blood poison,” in his 1925 manifesto to criticize immigration and mixing of races: “All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning.”

Trump has since said he has “never read ‘Mein Kampf,’” an assertion long contradicted by his late ex-wife, Ivana Trump, and former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. Which is why many aren’t buying the former President’s excuse that the rhetorical similarity is merely coincidental.

Count Christie among those doubters.

“This is not accidental. This is not a slip of the tongue. This is a dog whistle to people who are rightfully angry about illegal immigration at our southern border and are trying to paint all immigrants with that brush. It’s wrong,” Christie said.

“That language he used last weekend is not our country. It is not who we are. It’s not who we’ve ever been. And I don’t want our country to be represented by someone who would speak that way.”

Christie then delivered some condemnation to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who declined to denounce Trump’s comments.

Pressed Monday by reporters in Iowa for a response, DeSantis said Trump made a “tactical mistake” by expressing his disapproval of America’s current immigration policy in such loaded terms.

He then quickly pivoted to an attack on President Joe Biden’s administration by asking, “Why are we in a situation where we’re even having those discussions?”

That’s not nearly an appropriate enough response to a presidential candidate paraphrasing one of the most reviled men in history, Christie said.

“I’ll tell you this, (Trump is) not the only person that we should be disappointed in. Ron DeSantis was asked about that (and) you know what he said? It was a tactical error, as if he was following Waze in his car and he tactically made the wrong turn,” he said. “What’s that mean exactly, a tactical error?”

Christie also noted that former United Nations Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley “still hasn’t answered” questions about what she thinks of Trump’s remarks.

“I mean, how hard is this?” he said.