Former Fox News host Geraldo Rivera ripped former US President Donald Trump for claiming that undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Rivera also slammed a Trump spokesperson’s claim that the phrase is “used in everyday life” as “absolute bullshit.”
“I think it’s vile. I think it’s disgusting. It’s very disappointing,” Rivera told CNN’s Abby Phillip about Trump’s comment in a video shared online by Mediaite.
“To sink to that level, it’s for me a personal embarrassment that we were friends for so long,” he continued. “This language is racist, it is really disgusting, and, you know, some things cannot abide. We cannot abide certain things and he has crossed the line. I beseech his followers to listen to what he said about poison blood.”
The Nazis used similar “poisonous rhetoric,” Rivera claimed.
“I hate to use Nazi or Hitler references, but it is impossible to miss the obvious parallels,” he alleged. “Poison blood, it was a direct reference. He made a direct reference that the migrants, the immigrants, mostly Latinos now, may I say, are poisoning, polluting the blood of real Americans. It is intolerable. I mean it’s absolutely beyond the pale.”
A spokesperson for Trump downplayed the comment, claiming it was “a normal phrase that is used in everyday life.”
Rivera told Phillip: “Excuse me, I apologise to you and your audience, but I have to say that the spokesman’s excuse was absolute bullshit.”
“It is lowdown and dirty,” he added. “Give me a break.”