Former President Donald Trump on Monday suggested undocumented immigrants who commit murder have “bad genes,” in the latest example of the former president using dehumanizing rhetoric as he tries to stoke fears about those in the country illegally.
In a radio interview on “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” Trump again distorted statistics on immigration and crime to attack Vice President Kamala Harris as he falsely claimed she was “allowing people to come through an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers.”
“You know, now, a murderer, I believe this – it’s in their genes. And we got bad, a lot of bad genes in our country right now,” Trump said.
CNN has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.
It was the latest instance of Trump using dehumanizing and disparaging rhetoric as he targets undocumented immigrants and vows mass deportations if he’s reelected. Trump has made curbing illegal immigration a central part of his 2024 campaign message and regularly uses inflammatory and degrading language when describing undocumented immigrants.
Last fall, Trump said in an interview that undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” using language that is often employed by White supremacists and nativists in comments that drew rebuke from civil rights groups. Trump has also spread false conspiracy theories about Haitian migrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.
Trump has also previously invoked genetics on the campaign trail, telling supporters in Minnesota at a campaign stop in 2020, “You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it, don’t you believe? The racehorse theory. You think we’re so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.”
Racehorse theory comes from the idea in horse breeding that selective breeding produces superior bloodlines.
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