If it was a contest of insults, provocations, incendiary and racist statements, undoubtedly the US election campaign would have declared Donald Trump the winnerwho gives a taste of what his return to the White House could look like should he win the upcoming 2024 US presidential election.

In some cases, he has used violent descriptions to criticize immigrants and opponents. He has warned that the United States is on the brink of collapse, and his rhetoric has raised concerns that if elected he might use the power of the state to attack those he considers enemies.

Here are some of Trump’s most controversial statements to date:

“They are poisoning the blood of our country”

Trump has said on multiple occasions that immigrants living in the United States illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

The head of the Jewish NGO, Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, called Trump’s statement “racist, xenophobic and despicable”. Democratic President Joe Biden’s staff compared Trump’s comments to those of Adolf Hitler, who used the phrase “blood poisoning” in his “Mein Kampf” manifesto.

Polls show that illegal immigration is a major cause of concern for voters, with Trump trying to bolster that narrative by blaming immigrants for crime and the economic downturn.

In previous statements, Trump has accused Democrats of deliberately allowing immigrants into the country to boost their political support.

This is a staple of the far right as the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory that leftist and Jewish elites are replacing white populations with immigrants of color which will lead to a “white genocide”.

The debate over the economic effects of immigration has been going on for decades, although most researchers say that immigration generally boosts economic growth.

About 33% of Republicans in a February Reuters/Ipsos poll cited immigration as their top issue, while 6% of Democrats said the same.

“Parasites”

Trump vowed at a November rally in New Hampshire to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and radical left-wing thugs living like vermin within our country’s borders.”

Those comments drew criticism from congressional Democrats and some moderate Republicans. Some historians have traced the use of the word “parasite” to Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini.

Political historians explain that the use of such dehumanizing rhetoric, including words such as “vermin,” facilitates the disenfranchisement of residents and citizens as they are seen as less worthy of democratic or constitutional protection. The Nazis, for example, often referred to Jews as lice, rats and vermin.

“Blood Bath”

During an appearance in March alongside a Republican Senate candidate in Ohio, Trump warned of a “bloodbath” if he fails to unseat Biden in the November election.

At the time Trump was discussing the need to protect the US auto industry from overseas competition, and Trump and his allies later said he was referring to the auto industry when he used the term.

The Trump campaign sought to portray Biden as a threat to auto jobs in Michigan, a key state, because of the Biden administration’s promotion of electric vehicles.

Biden’s campaign team rejected that characterization and condemned Trump’s “extremism,” “thirst for revenge” and “threats of political violence.”

“Immigrants are animals, not people”

Trump has often referred to immigrants living in the country illegally in subhuman terms, referring to them as animals prone to violence.

“In some cases they’re not human, in my opinion,” he said during an appearance in March in Ohio. “But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical Left says this is a terrible thing. ‘These are animals, OK, and we have to stop them,'” he said.

During his speeches, Trump often claims that immigrants who cross the border illegally have escaped prisons and asylums in their home countries and are fueling violent crime in the United States.

While data to date on the immigration status of criminals show that percentage is small, researchers say people living in the country illegally do not commit violent crimes at a higher rate than native-born citizens.

“Black Americans and Crime”

Trump drew the ire of Biden’s staff and civil rights leaders and groups in February when he suggested black voters were more drawn to him because of the criminal charges he faces. He also said black voters came to “embrace” his mistakes.

“And then I was accused a second time, a third time and a fourth time. And a lot of people said that’s why I like black people because they’ve been hurt so badly and they’ve been discriminated against,” Trump told a conservative African-American group in South Carolina ahead of the state’s primary election, which he won.

Trump has also described at least two black prosecutors — Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James — as “animals.”

Trump’s allies say his attacks are about prosecutors’ behavior, not their race, and say he is working hard to win the support of black voters.

“Reveal Now”

Trump often invokes apocalypse situations, telling his supporters that if he doesn’t win in November — or if he doesn’t manage otherwise — the country faces terminal decline.

At a March campaign event in North Carolina, Trump said Biden’s immigration policies amounted to a “conspiracy to overthrow the United States” through lax security policies that have allowed millions of migrants to cross the US border with Mexico.

The Biden administration, Trump argued, is seeking to “collapse the American system, nullify the will of the real American voters, and create a new power base that gives them control for generations.”

In response, the Biden campaign pointed to a border security bill in Congress that Trump helped torpedo in February by urging Republicans to vote against it.

Dictator on “day one”

During a televised message in December, Trump said that if elected to a second term he would not be a dictator “except from day one.” He said he would close the southern border with Mexico and expand oil drilling on his first day in office.

Biden has focused his campaign on the claim that it is critical that Trump not be returned to power because he represents a threat to democracy.

About 44 percent of Democrats said extremism is their top election issue, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll in February, while 13 percent of Republicans said the same.