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Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday night at a campaign stop in Iowa that he has not read "Mein Kampf," the manifesto written by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

Trump made the statement following recent criticism comparing his words over undocumented immigrants to those used by Hitler in the lead-up to World War II.

While he distanced himself from the controversial book, Trump doubled down on his previous comments about undocumented immigrants.

Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump looks on during a campaign event on Dec. 19, 2023 in Waterloo, Iowa.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

"They're destroying the blood of our country," Trump said about the waves of migrants who have crossed the border. "They're ruining our country. And it's true they're destroying the blood of our country. That's what they're doing. They're destroying our country."

Throughout the 2024 election cycle, the former president has said people who cross the border illegally are "poisoning the blood" on multiple occasions. Recently, he has ramped up the use of the phrase during his latest campaign speeches. This has drawn criticism from those who claim that Hitler and white supremacists use similar language, pointing to the fact that Hitler wrote about "blood poisoning" in "Mein Kampf."

After telling the crowd he had never read Hitler's book, Trump went on to say that Hitler used the phrase "in a much different way."

"They don't like it when I said that -- and I never read 'Mein Kampf.' They said, 'Oh, Hitler said that' - in a much different way. No, they're coming from all over the world. People all over the world," Trump told those at his Iowa event.

Trump continued to use disparaging language when talking about immigrants who have crossed the border, accusing them of bringing in crime and destroying "the fabric of our country."

"They could bring in disease that's going to catch on in our country, but they do bring in crime. They're destroying the blood of our country. They're destroying the fabric of our country," he said.

The remarks were made during Trump's Christmas rally in Waterloo, Iowa, where the festivities were outshined by breaking legal news regarding Trump's eligibility to appear on Colorado's presidential primary ballot.

The state Supreme Court ruled late Tuesday that the former president is ineligible to run for president in 2024 based on the 14th Amendment's insurrection ban, stemming from the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Trump's campaign quickly vowed to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Despite news of the ruling breaking roughly an hour before Trump took the stage, the former president did not directly mention it. Instead, he stuck to his usual unsubstantiated claims that President Joe Biden is responsible for the investigations into him while accusing Biden and Democrats of being "willing to violate the U.S. Constitution at levels never seen before in order to win this election."

"Joe Biden is a threat to democracy, he's a threat," Trump continued. "They're weaponizing law enforcement for high-level election interference because we're beating them so badly in the polls."

Trump kicked off his speech earlier in the night by attempting to lower expectations for Iowa caucus results while still boasting about his lead in the polls.

"This is really important -- our country's at stake. We have a country that's never been in trouble like it is right now. So get out and vote whether we're leading in the polls or not leading in the polls," Trump told his supporters.

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Trump claims he's never read Hitler's 'Mein Kampf,' as he doubles down on anti-immigrant phrase - ABC News

The Senate fundraising arm of the Republican Party send blood pressure spiking on Christmas Eve in an attempt to juice a few more dollars out of the MAGA base.

Could Tucker Carlson be President Trumps running mate? read the subject line of a fundraising blast shortly after 3 p.m. on Sunday.

The body of the email boasted of TWO MAJOR announcements coming from the ex-Fox News star. Nothing in the email answered the question posed in the subject linea GOP curiosity gap, holiday editioninstead touting Carlsons rebrand under The Tucker Carlson Network, or TCN.

Earlier in the day, Carlson released a 7-minute interview with disgraced actor Kevin Spacey. Coincidentally, the pair discussed a 2024 ticket with Carlson serving as VP.

Its unclear if this fundraising ploy from the National Republican Senatorial Committee should be taken any more seriously.

Officials from the NRSC did not return a request for comment. Carlson also did not respond when reached by text message.

In a November podcast interview, Donald Trump said he would consider picking Carlson as his VP.

Carlson, who still holds the record for the most viewed cable news show in American history, responded to Trumps speculation by indicating he wouldnt necessarily love the vetting process involved.

The 54-year-old heir to a TV dinner and frozen poultry product fortune said at the time hes a total sucker for Trump, but also might have some things in his past hed prefer to hide.

I havent led a life that prepares a person for politics, Carlson, a Beltway fixture and still a highly influential voice in the modern GOP, told fellow Fox News expatriate Megyn Kelly on her podcast. I dont think I have any, like, horrible skeletons or anything. Its not that. Its just that thats not how my brain works. Ive never done anything like that. I cant imagine spending time with politicians.

Carlson said he also gets along with Trump really well, and [the] closer I am physically to Trump, like if Im with him in the room, I always love Trump and I think its impossible not to, and you know the experience, he told Kelly, whom Trump once called highly overrated (he also infamously insinuated she was menstruating during the first GOP debate of the 2016 campaign). Hes just charming, Carlson added.

For his part, Carlson privately called Trump a demonic force and a destroyer, said he hated him passionately, and was very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights following the Jan. 6 insurrection, according to text messages unearthed in discovery for Dominion Voting Systems $787 million lawsuit against Fox News.

Im really grateful for what I have, but I dont think, like, America needs me, Carlson told Kelly, rounding out the discussion around the previous VP speculation, and I dont want to become an egomaniac or a solipsist, and thats what you become when you start thinking that way.

Roger Sollenberger contributed reporting for this story.

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GOP Floats Tucker Carlson As Donald Trump's 2024 Vice President Pick - The Daily Beast

Its not unusual for Trump to survey donors, outside advisers and members of his Mar-a-Lago resort on personnel matters. He has also pressed allies for their impressions of other prominent Republicans in recent months including former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Sens. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Reps. Byron Donalds (R-Fl.) and Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Arizona Republican Kari Lake.

But Haley has been the subject of his most recent focus.

Haleys polling surge has alarmed some staunch Trump confidants who are acutely aware that the former president pays close attention to survey data. In interviews and public appearances, they have emphatically swatted down the idea of Haley for vice president in hopes that Trump wont warm to the idea.

Former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon, who warned attendees at a conservative conference last weekend that the GOP hierarchy would try to push Trump to pick Haley, told POLITICO that the former ambassador used outdated Republican talking points and embraced Fox News-laundered neoliberal neocon policies that MAGA finds unacceptable.

Trumps campaign has dismissed any chatter of vice president picks as premature, maintaining that he is focused on winning the upcoming primary contests. A campaign spokesperson did not comment for this story. A Haley spokesperson declined to comment as well.

During a phone conversation with one ally about Haley, Trump indicated that he was aware of the criticisms of her but nonetheless wanted to get this persons take about the former ambassador, according to a person familiar with the call.

The two have had a complicated relationship. Haley backed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio over Trump in the 2016 Republican primary. But after he was elected, Trump picked her to be his U.N. ambassador, a post she held for two years. Haley broke sharply with Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, when she said Trump would be judged harshly by history.

But Haley would later try to patch things up. A few months after the Capitol siege, she said she wouldnt run for president in 2024 if Trump did. The former ambassador also tried to arrange a meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago but was turned down by the former president, who was rankled by her criticism.

After the 2022 midterm elections, Haley ultimately decided to run for president. She broke the news to Trump, who at that point had already entered the race, in a phone call.

Within some conservative circles, there is an emerging belief that Haleys potential electoral strength polls show her leading former President Joe Biden nationally and in key battleground states by wide margins make her a conventional choice to serve as a running mate. Trump allies have moved swiftly to express their concerns that shes not aligned with his base. And theyve done so with little subtlety; deploying a full-scale media barrage of anti-Haley attacks.

Donald Trump Jr., the former presidents eldest son, took to Newsmax to declare he would go to great lengths to make sure his father didnt pick Haley. And Tucker Carlson, a former Fox News host who is frequently in touch with the former president, said on a conservative podcast this week that he would advocate against a Trump-Haley ticket as strongly as I could.

Republican strategist Roger Stone, a longtime outside adviser to the former president, told POLITICO that he too would be personally opposed to such a selection, because I believe that [Haleys] views are so antithetically different than President Trumps views.

Stone stressed that he had not personally spoken to Trump about Haley.

Vice presidential picks are not typically made until right before the party convention, which will be held next summer. But the early pile-on against Haley underscores how Trumps base has begun to mobilize well ahead of schedule. To those in the MAGA wing of the party, the stakes are high: Whoever Trump selects could be seen as his heir apparent and a prospective future party leader. Trump, if elected, can only serve four years.

Trump himself has downplayed the importance of the vice president pick.

The one thing I would say, nobody ever votes for the vice president, Trump said earlier this year.

Haley has said that she has no interest in being anyone elses vice president and is confident she will continue to rise in the primaries.

Its not even a conversation, and it doesnt matter what candidate wants me to answer it: I dont play for second, Haley told Christian Broadcast Network. Its offensive when anybody says that, Oh, she wants to be vice president. You dont do something like this to be vice president. You dont sacrifice emotionally, mentally, physically with your family, everything to come in second.

That hasnt stopped one of her top rivals, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, from suggesting otherwise. DeSantis has tried to distinguish himself from Haley by saying that she is not seriously running for president but rather to be Trumps vice president. His campaign on Tuesday launched a website, TrumpNikki2024.com.

Despite the relatively early stage of the race, the vice presidential posturing and speculation is already underway. Stefanik, one of Trumps most forceful defenders on Capitol Hill, visited the former president at his Mar-a-Lago resort this week, and posted a picture on X of the two flashing a thumbs-up. And when Trump held a rally with Noem in September, a big-screen TV situated above them read Trump-Noem 2024.

How interested Trump is in Haley is not clear, and many of those close to the former president are skeptical he would actually pick her. They point out that he prizes loyalty and that Haley who Trump picked for the U.N. post ended up challenging Trump for the nomination after initially saying she wouldnt.

Trump has spent much of the past year focusing his attacks on DeSantis. But some Trump allies see indications that he might be willing to move against Haley, who has emerged as a favorite of a GOP donor class that is eager to stop Trump. Without explicitly naming Haley during a recent speech in New Hampshire, the former president assailed candidates who do the bidding of Wall Street and the Washington establishment.

It isnt the first time Haley has been mentioned as a prospective Trump veep pick. While running for reelection in Nov. 2019, Trump acknowledged rumors he would replace then-Vice President Mike Pence with Haley but shot down the idea that he would do so.

Some in the party see Haley as a potentially strong selection, and someone who has been able to appeal to a swath of the party beyond the MAGA set. During a recent appearance at The New York Times DealBook Summit, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said that she would potentially add to Trumps base of supporters and that the eventual selection should be geared toward addition, not subtraction.

Dont tell that to members of Trumps hardcore base.

Theres only one good thing about Nikki Haley, said conservative activist Gavin Wax, who recently appeared onstage with the former president at a New York gala dinner. Its that everyone in MAGA hates her guts.

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Trump allies and MAGA luminaries move to kill off the Haley-for-VP buzz - POLITICO

Published Dec. 22

Former President Donald Trump has a few gripes with the Lincoln Project, a political advocacy group composed of Republicans who oppose Trumps leadership. A recent complaint: that the group is showing altered footage of him committing gaffes.

The perverts and losers at the failed and once disbanded Lincoln Project, and others, are using A.I.(Artificial Intelligence) in their Fake television commercials in order to make me look as bad and pathetic as Crooked Joe Biden, Trump posted Dec. 4 on Truth Social.

In the Lincoln Projects Dec. 4 video, titled Feeble, a narrator addresses Trump directly with a taunt. Hey, Donald, the female voice says. We notice something. More and more people are saying it. Youre weak. You seem unsteady. You need help getting around. The video flashes through scenes showing Trump tripping over his words, gesturing, misspeaking and climbing steps to a plane with something white stuck to his shoe.

Are these clips the work of AI? We reviewed them and found the Trump clips are legitimate and not generated using AI. We reached out to the Trump campaign but did not hear back.

The Lincoln Project posted on X, formerly Twitter, that its Feeble ad was not AI-generated. We also looked at two other ads the group published in the days preceding Trumps post and found no evidence they included AI-generated content, either.

We identified the origin of all but one of the 31 photos and videos used in the Feeble ad, 21 of them featuring Trump. Weve corroborated them with footage from C-SPAN, news outlets, and/or government archives. In some of the clips, Trump is trying to publicly mock President Joe Biden, which the Lincoln Project ad does not make clear.

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For good measure, we also checked the clips in the video that didnt feature Trump. These included clips and photos of Biden and stock videos. None of them were AI-generated, either.

We were unable to find the source for a 1-second video of Biden smiling at the 0:45 timestamp in the ad.

But of the 21 Trump-related images and clips in the ad, we found no evidence they were created or altered using AI.

The Lincoln Project also uploaded two other ads near the time of Trumps post that appeared to attack Trump. One called Christian Trump was also published on YouTube on Dec. 4. Another, titled Welcome to the clown show was uploaded Dec. 3.

We checked those, too, and found no evidence that AI was used to alter Trumps appearance or make him seem to say something he didnt.

At the 1:09 timestamp of Christian Trump, the Lincoln Project included a photo of Bibles stacked in a bathroom, which appears to have been altered. The original photo shows a bathroom in Trumps Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, which an indictment said was used to store boxes of records; it did not include a stack of Bibles.

In Welcome to the clown show we were unable to identify the source for a clip of a person talking about his preferred leader at the 0:58 timestamp. We were also unable to identify the source of the audio at the end of Christian Trump, which sounds like Trump saying Jesus Christ.

But there were no AI-generated clips of Trumps likeness.

We rate Trumps claim that the Lincoln Project is using AI in its television commercials about Trump False.

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

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Donald Trump said an ad used AI to make him look bad. The clips are real. - Tampa Bay Times

Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump asked an appeals court in Washington on Saturday night to toss a federal indictment accusing him of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, arguing that he was immune to the charges because they arose from actions he had taken while he was in the White House.

The weekend filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was the latest salvo in a long-running and crucial battle between Mr. Trump and the special counsel, Jack Smith, over whether the former president enjoys immunity to the election interference charges.

The fight over immunity has now touched all three levels of the federal court system, including the Supreme Court, which on Friday declined Mr. Smiths request to intervene and hear the case before the appeals court. The ultimate resolution of the issue will have a significant effect not only on the overall viability of the election interference case, but also on whether a trial on the charges is postponed until the heart of the 2024 campaign or even until after the election. At that point, if Mr. Trump wins the presidency, he could order the charges to be dropped.

In a 55-page brief to a three-judge panel of the court, D. John Sauer, a lawyer who has been handling appeals for Mr. Trump, argued that under the Constitution, judges cannot hold the president accountable for any acts undertaken while in office.

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Trump Asks Appeals Court to Toss Election Case on Immunity Grounds - The New York Times