Former Mexican presidents compare Trump to Hitler

Former Mexican President Felipe Calderón has compared US Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler this weekend. Trump has described Mexican immigrants as rapists and drugs-dealers and pledged to make Mexico pay for a wall along its border with the US.

"This logic of praising the white supremacy is not just anti-immigration. He is acting and speaking out against immigrants that have a different skin color than he does, it is frankly racist and [he is] exploiting feelings like Hitler did in his time," said Calderón during an event in Mexico City on Saturday.

Calderón – who was Mexico's president between 2006-2012 – was not the only former Mexican president to compare Trump to the Nazi dictator.

In an interview with CNN on Friday, Calderon's predecessor, Vincente Fox said of Trump: "Today, he's going to take that nation (US) back to the old days of conflict, war and everything. I mean, he reminds me of Hitler. That's the way he started speaking. He has offended Mexico, Mexicans, (and) immigrants. He has offended the Pope. He has offended the Chinese. He's offended everybody."

Last week, Fox's response to Trump's pledge to make Mexico pay for the wall were scathing.

"I'm not going to pay for that f***ing wall," he said in an interview with Fusion.

Muslim ban

Trump's plan to temporarily ban all Muslims from the US in response to the terror threat from Islamist militant group Isis has also led to comparisons with Hitler.

"If you go and look at your history and you read your history in the lead-up to the Second World War, this is the kind of rhetoric that allowed Hitler to move forward," New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman told CNN in December.

Trump is favourite to be nominated Republican candidate ahead of the Super Tuesday primary nominations this week.

Despite Trump's claims he is gaining ground among Latino voters, he has the highest negative ratings among Hispanic voters of any of the major GOP contenders, a Washington Post-Univision News poll found. The poll found that 8-in-10 Hispanic voters have an unfavourable view of Trump, including more than 7-in-10 who have a "very unfavourable" view of him.

In November 2015, Trump announced that Muslims in the US would have to register in a central database. When asked by a reporter how this policy differed from the Nazi's treatment of Jews, Trump replied, "You tell me."