Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday night denied he was inspired by Hitler while repeating his comments that immigrants were “destroying the blood of our country” — despite coming under intense fire for similar remarks over the weekend.

“They’re destroying the blood of our country. That’s what they’re doing — they’re destroying our country,” Trump said Tuesday at an event in Waterloo, Iowa, echoing comments he made at a rally in New Hampshire on Saturday in which he said immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Trump’s weekend remarks were met with much criticism, including from President Joe Biden, who compared his likely 2024 opponent’s rhetoric to that used in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

“The language he uses reminds us of the language coming out of Germany in the 30s,” Biden told reporters Tuesday. “He has called those who oppose him ‘vermin’ and again this weekend he talked about the blood of our country being poisoned.”

But Trump brushed off the Hitler comparison, claiming that Hitler’s rhetoric was said “in a much different way.”

“I never read ‘Mein Kampf’” he told the audience in Iowa. “They said Hitler said that — in a much different way. No, they’re coming from all over the world — people all over the world. We have no idea — they could be healthy, they could be very unhealthy, 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 the country, they’re destroying the fabric of our country, and we’re going to have to get them out.”