Dehumanizing Language About Immigrants: 'Animals,' 'Vermin,' 'Poisoning the Blood,' and the Use of Eliminationist Rhetoric
Tier 3Ongoing2015-06-16 to 2024-01-10
Factual Summary
From the launch of his first presidential campaign in June 2015 through his 2024 campaign and second term, Donald Trump has used dehumanizing language about immigrants that historians, linguists, and genocide scholars have identified as consistent with the rhetorical patterns that have preceded mass violence in other countries and historical periods.
Trump's campaign announcement on June 16, 2015, included the statement that Mexican immigrants are "bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists." This framing, which characterized an entire national group by the criminal behavior of a small minority, set the rhetorical pattern for the years that followed.
In May 2018, during a White House roundtable discussion on immigration policy, Trump referred to undocumented immigrants as "animals." The White House subsequently claimed that Trump was referring specifically to MS-13 gang members, but the exchange in the transcript was ambiguous, and Trump did not limit the term when he used it. Trump later embraced the characterization without qualification, stating: "I'm referring to the MS-13 gangs, but I will also say this: these are not people. These are animals."
In a November 2023 Veterans Day speech, Trump described his political opponents as "vermin" who are "living within the confines of our country." NPR, the Associated Press, and multiple historians immediately noted that the term "vermin" was used by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini to describe political enemies and targeted groups. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian of fascism and authoritarianism at New York University, stated that "calling people vermin was used effectively by Hitler and Mussolini to dehumanize people and encourage their followers to engage in violence."
In September 2023 and again in December 2023, Trump stated that immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country." The phrase directly echoes language from Hitler's "Mein Kampf," in which Hitler wrote about Jewish people "poisoning" the blood of the Aryan race. Historians noted that blood purity rhetoric was central to Nazi ideology and was used to justify the systematic dehumanization and murder of millions. When confronted with the comparison, Trump stated that he had never read "Mein Kampf" and was not aware of the parallel. He repeated the phrase at an Iowa rally in January 2024, doubling down after the initial controversy.
Trump also described immigrants as "infesting" the United States in a June 2018 tweet, writing: "Democrats are the problem. They don't care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country." The verb "infest" has a long history of use in dehumanization campaigns, as it associates human beings with insects or vermin.
In an October 2024 rally, Trump said of immigrants: "They're not people, in my opinion." He also referred to immigrants as having "bad genes" during a radio interview, invoking biological language that scholars of eugenics and scientific racism have identified as consistent with hereditarian ideologies that undergirded historical atrocities.
Primary Sources
1. Trump presidential campaign announcement speech transcript, June 16, 2015
2. White House transcript of roundtable discussion on immigration, May 16, 2018
3. Trump Veterans Day speech transcript, November 11, 2023
4. Trump rally speech transcripts, September and December 2023, and January 2024, containing "poisoning the blood" language
5. Trump Twitter post regarding immigrants "infesting" the country, June 19, 2018
6. Trump rally and interview transcripts containing "not people" and "bad genes" language, October 2024
Corroborating Sources
1. NPR: "Trump called his political opponents 'vermin,' echoing language used by Hitler," November 17, 2023
2. PBS NewsHour: "Trump says he didn't know his immigration rhetoric echoes Hitler. That's part of a broader pattern," 2024
3. NY1/Associated Press: "Trump draws backlash after saying immigrants poison the nation's blood," December 20, 2023
4. Rolling Stone: "Trump Defends Using Nazi Rhetoric to Describe Immigrants," 2024
5. Brewminate: "Trump's Rhetoric and the Politics of Dehumanization," 2024
6. University of Central Florida: "Donald Trump And The Rhetorical Dehumanization Of Migrants," academic paper, 2024
Counterarguments and Context
Trump and his supporters argued that his strong language reflects genuine frustration with illegal immigration and that his comments about "animals" and "vermin" were directed at criminals, gang members, and violent offenders rather than at immigrants broadly. They contended that the comparisons to Nazi rhetoric are unfair and that critics are distorting his words to serve a political narrative. Trump stated that he had never read "Mein Kampf" and was not intentionally echoing Hitler. Defenders pointed to the real harms caused by gang violence, drug trafficking, and crimes committed by some undocumented immigrants and argued that strong rhetorical responses are justified. Some supporters characterized the academic and media responses as overwrought and argued that the "poisoning the blood" phrase is a common metaphorical expression that does not carry the specific historical weight critics assign to it. However, Trump repeated the phrase after the comparison to Hitler was widely publicized, and his use of the terms "vermin," "infest," "animals," "not people," and "bad genes" in reference to immigrant populations constitutes a documented rhetorical pattern that multiple independent scholars of authoritarianism and genocide studies have identified as matching the linguistic precursors to mass violence in other historical contexts.
Author's Note
The classification of language as dehumanizing is not a subjective political judgment. Scholars of genocide and mass atrocity have identified specific rhetorical categories that recur across historical episodes: categorization, symbolization, dehumanization, and polarization are among the early stages of the process identified by Genocide Watch and other research institutions. Trump's language about immigrants maps onto these categories with documented specificity. The term "poisoning the blood" is not a generic metaphor. It has a specific provenance in the ideology that produced the Holocaust. Whether Trump was aware of the origin is less significant than the fact that he continued to use the phrase after the connection was made public.