Former Attorney General Bill Barr said Wednesday on CNN’s “The Lead” that former President Donald Trump saying several times that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country is offensive.
Barr said, “I’m offended by it because it has racist overtones. I actually feel, as you say, we have to control the border and a lot of people coming across the border from anywhere in the world. We don’t know where they’re coming from.
He continued, “The fact of the matter is that the Hispanic Americans that have come up from South America have made great citizens. You know, they have strong values. They’re entrepreneurial. My son-in-law was a Marine combat officer, and he said the best Marines in his unit in Iraq were recent Hispanic immigrants. So, I don’t like these racist overtones. In the broad sweep of history, the fact that we have a reservoir to our south of these people who come out of the Western tradition, their religious people, good family people in general, is a boon to the United States.”
Barr added, “Does that mean they all are like that? No. And does bringing in a lot of people at once from a different country, does that put strains on our system and harm the country to an extent? Yes, it does. But the attacks on the idea that they pollute our blood, I think are foul.”
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