Escalating his anti-immigrant rhetoric, Trump is now calling the United States “a garbage can for the world.”

The Republican nominee used the descriptor twice on Thursday night during a campaign rally in Arizona. “First time I’ve ever said ‘garbage can’ but, you know what, it’s a very accurate description,” he claimed.

On Friday in Texas, Trump again said, “We’re like a garbage can. First time I said it was last night.… I said it—I don’t know, just came out, ‘garbage can.’ We’re like a garbage can for the rest of the world to dump the people they don’t want.”

The unsavory, nativist phrase has elicited public outcry, and on Friday afternoon, Vice President Kamala Harris said Trump’s remarks were “just another example of how he really belittles our country.”

“This is someone who is a former president of the United States, who has a bully pulpit. And this is how he uses it? To tell the rest of the world that somehow the United States of America is trash?” Harris said. “I think, again, the president of the United States should be someone who elevates discourse and talks about the best of who we are.”

Online, many have decried Trump’s remarks as unpatriotic and departing from past U.S. leaders’ statements about America and immigration—such as those of John F. Kennedy, who celebrated America’s status as a “nation of immigrants” and wrote that “everywhere, immigrants have enriched and strengthened the fabric of American life.”

Historian Douglas M. Charles noted that Trump’s rhetoric parallels that of Ku Klux Klan leader William J. Simmons, who in the early 1920s said the United States is not “a melting-pot” but “a garbage can! … When the hordes of aliens walk to the ballot box and their votes outnumber yours, then that alien horde has got you by the throat.”

While the wording may be new—for Trump—his comparison of immigrants to garbage is consistent with his tendency to demonize and dehumanize immigrants, spanning back to his claims that Mexico was “bringing drugs,” “crime,” and “rapists” to the U.S. when announcing his 2016 campaign. More recently, he has accused immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country,” repeatedly referred to them as “animals,” and spread debunked rumors about Haitian migrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.

Several former White House officials who served under Donald Trump have come out in support of retired General John Kelly, who earlier this week called the former president a fascist who often praised Hitler.

Politico reported Friday that more than a dozen officials agreed with Kelly in a letter of their own, stating that “this is who Donald Trump is.”

“The revelations General Kelly brought forward are disturbing and shocking. But because we know Trump and have worked for and alongside him, we were sadly not surprised by what General Kelly had to say,” they wrote in the letter.

The letter goes far in backing Kelly, with the signatories saying that like him, they “did not take the decision to come forward lightly.”

“We are all lifelong Republicans who served our country. However, there are moments in history where it becomes necessary to put country over party. This is one of those moments. Everyone should heed General Kelly’s warning,” the letter states.

The letter’s signatories included Trump administration officials such as former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, former press secretary to the vice president Alyssa Farah Griffin, and former assistant secretary of homeland security Elizabeth Neumann, among others.

Grisham spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August, telling the Chicago audience that Trump “used to tell me, ‘It doesn’t matter what you say, Stephanie, just say it enough and people will believe you.’” Griffin has also come out against Trump, calling his message to women “creepy.”

The letter is the latest example of many Republicans turning against Trump. Some have even gone on to endorse Harris, such as a group of more than 100 former GOP officials, as well as former staffers to previous Republican presidential candidates. Harris hopes that the GOP defections don’t stop there but continue at the ballot box in 11 days.

The chair of the conservative-led House Freedom Caucus said that North Carolina’s legislature ought to preemptively grant Donald Trump all 16 of the state’s electors before any vote has even been counted.

Maryland Representative Andy Harris’s outrageous comments were in response to a speech that right-wing extremist Ivan Raiklin, who previously assembled a “Deep State target list” of Trump’s political enemies, gave at a Republican Party dinner hosted Thursday. Raiklin argued that due to the widespread damage and displacement caused by Hurricane Helene, North Carolina’s Republican-led state legislature should award its electors to Trump ahead of the election results, according to Politico.

Raiklin also suggested that Republican-controlled state legislatures in New Hampshire, Arizona, Nebraska, Georgia, and Wisconsin could carry out similar schemes, by coming together for a vote on Election Day.

When Raiklin opened the floor to questions, Maryland Representative Andy Harris said that it “makes a lot of sense” for North Carolina’s legislature to simply say Trump won, and actually suggested that waiting for the results of the popular vote would somehow “disenfranchise” voters.

“You statistically can go and say, ‘Hey, look, you got disenfranchised in 25 counties. You know what that vote probably would have been,’” Harris said. “Which would be—if I were in the Legislature—enough to go, ‘Yeah, we have to convene the Legislature. We can’t disenfranchise the voters.’”

The popular vote typically determines the allocation of electors in all 50 states.

Harris argued that the plan would only work in North Carolina, and would probably look like an illegal plot to steal the White House if Republicans tried it anywhere else.

“But how do you make the argument in other states? I mean, otherwise it looks like it’s just a power play. With North Carolina I mean, it’s legitimate. There are a lot of people who aren’t going to get to vote, and it may make the difference in that state,” he continued.

When asked to explain his statement, Harris told Politico, “As I’ve repeatedly said, every legal vote should be counted. I........

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