Trump impugns the genes of murdering migrants

Washington Post: "Trump suggests ‘bad genes’ to blame for undocumented immigrants who commit murders"

From the Washington Post news section:

Trump suggests ‘bad genes’ to blame for undocumented immigrants who commit murders

Trump made the comment during a radio interview Monday while criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris’s record on border security.

By Patrick Svitek

Updated October 7, 2024 at 3:29 p.m. EDT

Donald Trump suggested Monday that people in the country illegally who have committed murder and other crimes have “bad genes,” the latest example of rhetoric by the former president that dehumanizes immigrants and disparages them in racial terms.

If you can’t think of anything nice to say about murderers, don’t say anything at all.

… “You know, now, a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes,” Trump said. “And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now. They had 425,000 people come into our country that shouldn’t be here, that are criminals.” …

After the interview, a Trump campaign spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, said in a statement that Trump was “clearly referring to murderers, not migrants.”

The White House denounced Trump’s comments about “bad genes.”

“That type of language is hateful, it’s disgusting, it’s inappropriate and has no place in our country,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during the daily press briefing Monday.

Trump has faced backlash for his rhetoric targeting undocumented immigrants since he started running for president in 2015. But his language has grown more dark and vilifying in his latest campaign.

Trump has said undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” and even advocated for removing people from the country who are here legally, such as Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (Ohio), have amplified false claims that immigrants are eating pets in the Ohio town.

Trump’s latest comment referring to “bad genes” takes his rhetoric toward immigrants a step further, playing into tropes that foreigners are genetically inferior to Americans and responsible for societal problems — such as violent crime — as a result.

There are almost 8 billion non-Americans in the world, so America couldn’t possibly carefully choose just those immigrants who would most benefit Americans, the way Harvard carefully chooses Harvard students.

Why not? It would be racist for America to discriminate against anybody who wants to show up here, just because they are, say, murderers. We got to take what we’re offered by random foreigners. We’re not Harvard, you know.

Trump has previously broached the topic. In 2020, he praised a campaign rally crowd in predominantly White Minnesota for having “good genes.”

Where all the children are above average. (Which they kind of, sort of are according to Moynihan’s Law of the Canadian Border.)

He also touted the “racehorse theory,” the idea taken from horse-racing that people with superior qualities will pass those strengths on to their children.

Genetics is just pseudoscience!

“You have good genes, you know that, right?” Trump said. “You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it? Don’t you believe that? The racehorse theory — do you think we’re so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.”…

“This president, this vice president — we’re going to continue to forcefully reject this kind of vile, disturbing, hateful, hateful speech,” Jean-Pierre said. “It has no place — no place — in the country.”