CNN
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Former President Donald Trump suggested Monday that illegal immigrants who commit murders have “bad genes,” a dehumanizing rhetoric used by the former president to try to stoke fear about illegal immigrants. This is the latest example of using .
President Trump once again distorted immigration and crime statistics to attack Vice President Kamala Harris in a radio interview on “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” saying, “We’re allowing people to come in through open borders. But 13,000 of them were murderers.”
“You know, killers, I believe this – it’s in their genes. And we have a lot of bad genes in our country right now,” President Trump said.
CNN has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.
It was the latest example of President Trump using dehumanizing and derogatory rhetoric to target illegal immigrants and vow to mass deport them if re-elected. President Trump has made curbing illegal immigration a central part of his 2024 campaign message, regularly using inflammatory and degrading language to describe illegal immigration.
Last fall, President Trump said in an interview that illegal immigrants “contaminate the blood of our country,” using language commonly used by white supremacists and xenophobes, prompting condemnation from civil rights groups. there was. Trump also promoted a false conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.
Trump has previously brought up genetics on the campaign trail, telling supporters in Minnesota during a 2020 campaign stop: A lot of it has to do with genetics, don’t you believe it? Racehorse theory. Do you think we are that different? Minnesotans have good genes. ”
The racehorse theory originates from the idea in horse breeding that superior bloodlines can be produced through selective breeding.