Lara Trump says Angela Merkel's decision to welcome refugees led to 'the downfall of Germany'

AP Photo/Mike Groll

Lara Trump, daughter-in-law of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, speaks during a Women for Trump rally on in October 2016

• Lara Trump, the president's daughter-in-law and a Trump campaign official, said that German Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to open its doors to Middle Eastern refugees "led to the downfall of Germany" during a Fox Business interview on Thursday.
• Trump made the comments during a discussion of the president's attempts to crack down on Central and South Americans seeking asylum on the US-Mexico border.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Lara Trump, President Donald Trump's daughter-in-law and a campaign official, said the German Chancellor Angela Merkel's 2015 decision to open the country's doors to Middle Eastern refugees "led to the downfall of Germany."

"It was one of the worst things to ever happen to Germany," Trump said during a Fox Business interview on Thursday. "This president knows that. He's trying to prevent that from happening here. But Congress has got to get their act together and do the right thing for the American people."

Lara Trump, who is married to the president's second-oldest son, Eric, made her comments after Fox host Stuart Varney said that a caravan of Central American migrants reminded him of the millions of refugees who made perilous journeys to Europe in 2015.

Trump made no mention of Nazism, Adolf Hitler, or the Holocaust - something that critics online slammed her and Fox for.

Merkel allowed more than one million refugees into Germany in 2015 during a migrant crisis spurred by violent conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

The president has repeatedly slammed the German leader's decision, and has accused her of "ruining" Germany as a result. He falsely claimed last year that crime in Germany was "way up" as a result of migration. While overall crime fell by 9% in Germany in 2017 - a 25-year low - violent crime rose by 10% in 2015 and 2016.

Germany's domestic debate over immigration policy has also helped fuel the rise of right-wing nationalism and a political party, Alternative for Germany, that has been tied to and cheered by some neo-Nazis.