Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell responded Tuesday to recent anti-immigrant comments made by Donald Trump, saying the former president did not seem to mind having a migrant in his Cabinet.

Elaine Chao, who came to the U.S. from Taiwan when she was eight years old and is the wife of Mr. McConnell, served as Mr. Trump’s Transportation secretary.

Mr. Trump said over the weekend at a presidential campaign rally that immigrants who enter the U.S. illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country,” reminiscent of a Nazi-era phrase used by Adolf Hitler that Jews were “poisoning” the blood of Germans.

“It strikes me that didn’t bother him when he appointed Elaine Chao secretary of Transportation,” Mr. McConnell, Kentucky Republican, told reporters.

Ms. Chao was the first Trump Cabinet member to resign in the immediate aftermath of the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot, prompting several racist attacks against her since then by Mr. Trump, including the nickname “Coco Chow” and referring to Mr. McConnell’s “China-loving wife.”

Mr. Trump received bipartisan rebuke for his recent anti-immigrant rhetoric, with Democrats and the White House labeling him a “fascist.”

“They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done,” Mr. Trump told a crowd of supporters in New Hampshire on Saturday. “They’ve poisoned mental institutions, prisons all over the world. Not just in South America, not just in three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. From Africa, from Asia, from all over the world they’re pouring into our country. Nobody is even looking at them, they’re just coming in. The crime [and terrorism] is going to be tremendous.”

• Ramsey Touchberry can be reached at rtouchberry@washingtontimes.com.