Michael Sainato
THE GUARDIAN
Fri, October 18, 2024
Fri, October 18, 2024
A new poll has revealed that more than one-third of Americans agree with Donald Trump’s warning that undocumented immigrants in the US are “poisoning the blood” of America.
A significant 34% of the respondents to the poll, conducted by the Brookings Institution and Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), agreed with the statement previously made on the election campaign trail by the former US president and Republican party nominee for the White House, Donald Trump.
“One-third of Americans (34%) say that immigrants entering the country illegally today are ‘poisoning the blood of our country’, including six in 10 Republicans (61%), 30% of independents, and only 13% of Democrats,” a summary of the annual poll stated, which surveyed more than 5,000 individuals from 16 August to 4 September.
“This is a truly alarming situation to find this kind of rhetoric, find this kind of support from one of our two major political parties,” said Robert Jones, president and founder of the PRRI, during a presentation of the poll’s findings. “That language is straight out of Mein Kampf. This kind of poisoning the blood, it’s Nazi rhetoric.”
Trump told supporters during a rally in New Hampshire in December 2023 that immigrants coming into the US 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 told the crowd. “That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.”
He repeated the phrase in a social media post after the rally and had previously used it in a September 2023 interview.
“Blood poisoning” was a term used by Adolf Hitler in his Mein Kampf manifesto. Trump’s comments incited a strong rebuke from the Biden campaign at the time.
Related: Where do Harris and Trump stand on the key election issues?
The former Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie responded to Trump’s comments by stating: “He’s disgusting.”
The television presenter Geraldo Rivera recently cited the comments made by Trump in an interview with NewsNation, explaining why he would not vote for the former president. “I don’t know how any Latino person of any self-esteem, any self-respect, would be in favor of the ranting, the poisoning the blood of the country.”
The poll also found nearly one in four Trump supporters, 23%, believe if he loses the election that he should declare the results invalid and do whatever it takes to assume office.
Nearly 1 in 5 Republicans believe if Trump loses he should do ‘whatever it takes’ to put himself in White House
Gustaf Kilander
Mon, October 21, 2024
Nineteen percent of Republicans believe former President Donald Trump should do “whatever it takes” to return to power, even if that means calling the results invalid if he loses, a new national poll shows.
The group of Republicans willing to depart from democratic norms and possibly even use violence to get their way is getting bigger as Trump continues to falsely claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that November’s showdown has already been rigged.
The poll, conducted by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution, reveals how Trump has molded the Republican Party in his image as he motivates its most extreme members.
Democrats argue that Trump is a threat to democracy, and some in the party – 12 percent in the poll – say Vice President Kamala Harris should also reject the results if she loses.
The poll also shows that 29 percent of Republicans “believe that true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country.” Sixteen percent of independents and eight percent of Democrats say the same.
The president and founder of the research institute, Robert Jones, told Axios, “I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and these answers ... are keeping me up at night.”
He added those saying that the loser of the election should do whatever it takes to assume power are essentially backing a coup, calling it “pretty dark and worrisome.”
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump waves during a town hall in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. A new poll shows a number of Republicans believe he should do “whatever it takes” for him to get to the White House (AP)
Forty-one percent of Americans who trust conservative news outlets back the idea of using political violence to acheive political goals – and 30 percent of loyal Fox News viewers support the idea, according to the survey.
Among those who don’t watch TV news, 18 percent said they would support political violence, and the same was true for 13 percent of those who said they don’t trust mainstream media.
There are also differences in support for political violence along racial and religious lines, with 33 percent of Latter-day Saints and 28 percent of white evangelical Protestants believing that “patriots” may have to resort to violence to “save the country.”
Among Hispanic Catholics, that figure was 18 percent, among Black Protestants, it was 14 percent, and 10 percent of Jewish Americans backed the idea of using political violence.
However, there are some issues that appear to unite most Americans, such as limiting Supreme Court Justices to serve until a certain age or a specific number of years instead of for life, which 73 percent of Americans agreed with, according to the poll.
Meanwhile, 68 percent of Americans are also united in opposing legislation that would make it illegal to use or receive FDA-approved drugs, such as the abortion pill mifepristone, in the mail.
Opinion
An Alarming Number of Republicans Want Trump to Do Another Coup
Edith Olmsted
Mon, October 21, 2024
NEW REPUBLIC
Nearly one in five Republicans say that if Trump loses the election he should declare the results invalid, and do whatever it takes to assume office, according to a survey from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institute published earlier this month. An even larger number support their party using violence to advance their political aims.
If Trump loses, there are quite a few ways he could try to fight his way into the White House. Politico speculated that the Republican nominee could potentially undermine the vote certification process, convince Republican-led state legislatures to appoint alternate electors, and lobby for a GOP-led House to accept his alternate electors, essentially allowing the House to choose the president.
Meanwhile, only 12 percent of Democrats surveyed said that if Kamala Harris loses, she should call the results invalid, and seize the office.
49 percent of Americans believe that Trump would use the office of president to become dictator, while only 28 percent hold a similar concern about Harris. While disturbing, it’s not particularly surprising, considering Trump’s explicitly authoritarian plan to enact massive deportations and undermine rights and public education. There’s also that pesky promise to become a dictator on “day one.”
The survey also found that Republicans were more likely to support political violence than Democrats, with 29 percent of Republicans believing that true American patriots may resort to violence to save the country, compared with only 8 percent of Democrats agreeing with that statement.
Robert P. Jones, president and founder of PRRI, told Axios that the results were particularly disturbing. “I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and these answers … are keeping me up at night,” Jones said.
Nearly one in five Republicans say that if Trump loses the election he should declare the results invalid, and do whatever it takes to assume office, according to a survey from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institute published earlier this month. An even larger number support their party using violence to advance their political aims.
If Trump loses, there are quite a few ways he could try to fight his way into the White House. Politico speculated that the Republican nominee could potentially undermine the vote certification process, convince Republican-led state legislatures to appoint alternate electors, and lobby for a GOP-led House to accept his alternate electors, essentially allowing the House to choose the president.
Meanwhile, only 12 percent of Democrats surveyed said that if Kamala Harris loses, she should call the results invalid, and seize the office.
49 percent of Americans believe that Trump would use the office of president to become dictator, while only 28 percent hold a similar concern about Harris. While disturbing, it’s not particularly surprising, considering Trump’s explicitly authoritarian plan to enact massive deportations and undermine rights and public education. There’s also that pesky promise to become a dictator on “day one.”
The survey also found that Republicans were more likely to support political violence than Democrats, with 29 percent of Republicans believing that true American patriots may resort to violence to save the country, compared with only 8 percent of Democrats agreeing with that statement.
Robert P. Jones, president and founder of PRRI, told Axios that the results were particularly disturbing. “I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and these answers … are keeping me up at night,” Jones said.
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