Trump says migrants brought 'bad genes' to 'our country' – Mother Jones

Donald Trump speaks at a campaign stop at Dodge County Airport.Morry Gash/AP

It was just It's only a matter of time before former President Donald Trump resorts to racial science to further denigrate migrants who he believes are “poisoning the blood of the United States.” Speaking to radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday morning, the former president – who once described himself as a “gene believer” and is known to be obsessed with genetics and bloodlines – accused migrants coming to the southern border of being “criminals” and ” bad people.” Genes.”

“If you look at the things that (Vice President Kamala Harris) is proposing, they are so far off the mark that she has no idea,” Trump said said. “How about allowing people to come to an open border, 13,000 of whom were murderers? Many of them have murdered far more than one person and are now living happily in the United States. You know, now a murderer, I think it's in her genes. And we have a lot of bad genes in our country right now. They left, they let 425,000 people come into our country that shouldn't be here, they're criminals.” (Trump's claims are false.)

Of course, this isn't the first time the Republican candidate has spread openly racist and dangerous lies about immigrants. Hatred of immigrants has become his trademark and ending all forms of immigration is his main concern. But Trump's latest rant is a reminder of one of his lifelong guiding beliefs: that some people are inherently better than others. There's also the question of what Trump might be willing to do to people he believes have “bad genes.”

As my colleague David Corn wrote in this magazine in 2016, Trump has repeatedly claimed that success and making money depend on genetics.

During a campaign rally in Minnesota in 2020, Trump addressed a crowd of predominantly white supporters in a county that had voted to reject refugee resettlement: “You have good genes, you know that, right?” He also specifically referred to the discredited eugenic “racehorse theory” promoted by Nazis and white supremacists, which holds that selective breeding can lead to genetic superiority.)

“More than anything else,” Trump wrote in his letter The art of the deal“I think closing deals is an innate ability. It's in the genes.” In 1988, he told Oprah Winfrey: “You have to be born lucky, in the sense that you have to have the right genes.”

Trump and his vice president, JD Vance, do not hide their contempt for immigrants, especially those of color. When pressed they double in size. Recently, Trump introduced into his immigration policy the term “remigration,” a proposal favored by the European far right to forcibly return or mass deport non-ethnic European immigrants and their descendants, regardless of their citizenship.

They could not be more explicit about their ideals and their desire to make America a “homeland” where presumably only those who they believe have the right genetic makeup are welcome.