Rep. John McGuire (R-VA) made a politically vitriolic comparison on the right-wing Newsmax network while demanding airtight border security.
"It's common sense versus crazy communism," said McGuire, a one-term congressman who replaced another far-right lawmaker who turned on Donald Trump. "Think about it — communist Russia uses mass migration. They weaponize their immigration laws to destabilize Europe, but in the U.S. the Democrats are using those communist tactics with our border invasion."
Some international think tanks have argued that Russia manufactures migration from its own country into European territories they want to destabilize for political or military reasons.
However, McGuire's claims also touch on the Great Replacement Theory, a white supremacist idea that nonwhite immigration to majority-white countries is a plot by global elite forces to undermine the white race. And Russia itself has played a key role in pushing paranoia about migration on social media in the West.
McGuire was one of 30 members of Congress who got caught earlier this year taking a taxpayer-funded luxury tour of a castle in Scotland in the middle of a partial federal government shutdown that put thousands of people out of work.
In recent weeks, Trump has pushed for Republican messaging to link the Democratic Party to communism, borrowing a playbook from the Red Scares of earlier generations.
