Trump Calls Political Opponents "Vermin" and Pledges to "Root Out" Enemies "Within" the United States

In a Veterans Day address in Claremont, New Hampshire on November 11, 2023 — the same rally where he uses the "poisoning the blood" phrase — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump tells supporters that if elected, he will "root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country." He states: "The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within." Calling domestic political opponents "vermin" echoes the language of historical fascist and authoritarian leaders. Holocaust scholars and historians including Ruth Ben-Ghiat of New York University note that the term "vermin" has been used by authoritarian regimes to dehumanize political opponents as a precursor to violence. The language mirrors Nazi propaganda describing Jewish people as "Ungeziefer" (vermin). Trump's use of the phrase in the same speech as "poisoning the blood of our country" — a phrase from Hitler's Mein Kampf — prompts widespread alarm from historians.