Trump Sparks Outrage With 'Bad Genes' Comment About Immigrants

Donald Trump decided to start off his week by accusing immigrants of having “bad genes” that make them predisposed to murder .

During a Monday interview with conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt, the former president turned a question about Kamala Harris’ plan to give money to homebuilders into a rant against immigrants coming to the U.S.

Trump claimed that the Biden administration’s policies have allowed 13,000 murderers — many of them he alleged to have “murdered far more than one person” — to enter the country, and “they’re now happily living in the United States.”

Then he started repeating one of his favorite canards: that some groups have better genes than others.

“You know, now a murderer — I believe this — it’s in their genes . And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now,” Trump said.

His false “13,000 murderers” claim comes from a list of people with criminal conviction histories called the “non-detained docket,” released as part of data recently shared by the Department of Homeland Security.

As HuffPost reported , the docket, which has close to 436,000 people on it, specifically covers those with cases in immigration court who are not locked up in immigrant detention centers. 13,099 people on the docket had a past conviction for homicide; many are not free and are serving sentences in state or federal prison or in jail.

Last month, the DHS shared a statement saying that the data released was “being misinterpreted,” as well as clarified that it “goes back decades” and “includes individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years or more, the vast majority of whose custody determination was made long before this administration.”

Although Trump got no pushback from Hewitt, CNN’s John Berman was shocked by the comments , telling viewers on Monday that the former president “was calling [immigrants] murderers.”

One of Berman’s panelists, Democratic strategist Aisha Mills, pointed out that this isn’t exactly uncommon for Trump.

“We have long known that Donald Trump has revered the Nazis. He has revered Hitler, he’s read his book. ... Donald Trump has had a very sinister philosophy wanting to be a dictator,” she said.

“He would absolutely try to exterminate an entire group of people because he thinks that their genes are somehow different than his and faulty,” Mills added. “I say this with all the sternness that you hear in my voice because it is serious and Americans should recognize that.”

People on X, formerly called Twitter, also found Trump’s remarks chilling.