Trump's "Bad Genes" Remark About Immigrants Should Be Called Out For Echoing Nazi-speak

Bold headlines are needed that go beyond just observing a "long-held fascination with genes and genetics."

During a Monday appearance on conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt’s show, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said immigrants brought “bad genes” to the country.

“How about allowing people to come through an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers? Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States,” Trump said in a swipe at Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. “You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we’ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”

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DONALD TRUMP, GOP CANDIDATE: He was out of it, and he was exposed in the debate. And if I didn’t have that debate, you know, I’d probably be running against him. But I actually think that maybe, he would have been tougher than her, because they’re starting to find out that she’s mentally deficient now. And people don’t want to have another four years of a mentally deficient person.

HUGH HEWITT, HOST: Well, she also wants to give $25,000 to new homebuilders. That’ll just drive up the price of houses, and then she says…

TRUMP: That’s going to drive the prices up, yeah. Your price is going to be $100,000 dollars more now. No, no, everything they want to do is wrong. First of all, you have to let the private sector do it. You just have to let them do it. She wants to go into government housing. She wants to go into government feeding. She wants to feed people. She wants to feed people governmentally. She wants to go into a communist party type of a system. When you look at the things that she proposes, they’re so far off. She has no clue. How about allowing people to come through an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers? Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States. You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we’ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now. They left, they had 425,000 people come into our country that shouldn’t be here that are criminals. And you know one of the worst stats? 325,000 young children are missing. Can you imagine if that was my…

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

There’s a lot to unpack here. Let’s start with this: 13,000 murderers?

For the past couple of weeks, Trump has been making this claim on the campaign trail, blaming Harris for supposedly letting more than 13,000 “illegal immigrant murderers” into the U.S. This is number is a misinterpretation (willful or otherwise) of a letter sent from acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Patrick Lechleitner to Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX). Gonzales had requested data on noncitizens who had committed crimes but were not currently held in ICE custody.

From FactCheck.org’s debunk of Trump’s claims: