President Donald Trump has tried to "dehumanize, to otherize' immigrants, Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro said Friday, agreeing that's his actions are "very similar" to what another candidate, Beto O'Rourke, was saying when he compared the president's attitude to what occurred during Nazi Germany's Third Reich.
"That's very similar, whether it's to what Congressman O'Rourke was talking about, or other regimes that try and dehumanize people, and I believe that we're better than that," Castro told "MSNBC Live with Hallie Jackson."
O'Rourke, during a campaign event this week, said that when Trump referred to Mexican immigrants as "rapists and criminals," he would not be surprised if during the Third Reich, "other human beings were described as an infestation, as a cockroach or a pest that you would want to kill."
When asked if he thought O'Rourke's words were rhetoric, Castro replied that the Nazi regime also dehumanized people, as did other regimes, but "fortunately we haven't traveled down, of course, that same path, and we won't because this country is better than that."
However, he does think it's "very clear that we have a president who is bound and determined to dehumanize people, to create fear and paranoia about them in order to boost his own political fortunes."
Castro, who served as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama administration, further said Trump has been engaging in "hysterics" to hide that he's "actually failed."
"I don't believe that we should be treating folks who are fleeing a dangerous situation, a lot of women and children, families, as criminals," said Castro. "This president wants us to believe that we have to choose between border security and compassion."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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