Donald Trump suggested Monday that people in the country illegally who have committed crimes have \u201cbad genes,\u201d the latest example of rhetoric by the former president that dehumanizes immigrants and disparages them in racial terms.<\/p>\n
Trump made the comment during an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt while criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019s record on border security. Trump accused her of \u201callowing people to come through an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers\u201d \u2014 repeating a claim that significantly distorts data recently released by the federal government.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, now, a murderer, I believe this, it\u2019s in their genes,\u201d Trump said. \u201cAnd we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now. They had 425,000 people come into our country that shouldn\u2019t be here, that are criminals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump and his allies have seized on data released last month by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to Congress, claiming it shows that President Joe Biden\u2019s administration has let free more than 13,000 undocumented immigrants with homicide convictions. The number is larger \u2014 roughly 425,000 \u2014 when expanded to include all criminal convictions. However, the data goes back decades, long before Biden took office, and includes convicted criminals who could be jailed outside ICE\u2019s jurisdiction.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Trump has said undocumented immigrants are \u201cpoisoning the blood of our country\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s latest comment referring to \u201cbad genes\u201d takes his rhetoric toward immigrants a step further, playing into tropes that foreigners are genetically inferior to Americans and responsible for societal problems \u2014 such as violent crime \u2014 as a result.<\/p>\n
Trump has previously broached the topic. In 2020, he praised a campaign rally crowd in predominantly White Minnesota for having \u201cgood genes.\u201d He also touted the \u201cracehorse theory,\u201d the idea taken from horse-racing that people with superior qualities will pass those strengths on to their children.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have good genes, you know that, right?\u201d Trump said. \u201cYou have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn\u2019t it? Don\u2019t you believe that? The racehorse theory \u2014 do you think we\u2019re so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harris and Biden have repeatedly rebuked Trump over the language he has used to target immigrants, especially focusing on his allegation that undocumented immigrants are \u201cpoisoning the blood\u201d of the nation. They have linked it to the ideology of Adolf Hitler, who argued in his manifesto \u201cMain Kampf\u201d that Jews were subjecting Germans to \u201cblood poisoning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has sought to distance himself from the connection, saying last year that he is \u201cnot a student of Hitler.\u201d<\/p>\n
Campaigning for Biden this year in South Carolina, Harris brought up Trump\u2019s \u201cpoisoning the blood\u201d comment and said, \u201cFor years, the former president has stoked the fires of hate and bigotry and racism and xenophobia for his own power and political gain.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Donald Trump suggested Monday that people in the country illegally who have committed crimes have \u201cbad genes,\u201d the latest example of rhetoric by the former president that dehumanizes immigrants and disparages them in racial terms. Trump made the comment during an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt while criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019s record on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10710,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}