Trump appears to embrace racist eugenics theory: ‘They’re not exactly your genetic’

In the United States, eugenics was used to justify slavery and overall racist attitudes against African Americans, as well as anti-immigration policies.

President Donald Trump appeared to embrace the concept of eugenics, a long-debunked racist theory that some people are superior based on their genetics.

During an interview with Fox News’ “The Brian Kilmeade Show” on Friday, Trump was asked about the series of shooting attacks in the United States since Trump began the ongoing war in Iran alongside Israel.

The president suggested their genetics had something to do with the alleged crimes they committed.

“They’re sick people, and a lot more let in here. They shouldn’t have been let in. Others are just bad. They go bad. Something wrong. There’s something wrong there. And genetics are not exactly, uh, they’re not exactly your genetic. It’s one of those problems,” Trump said to Kilmeade, who is white.

The president placed blame on the immigration policies of his predecessor, President Joe Biden, and “other presidents.” However, data shows that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S. citizens.

To date, there have been three incidents that are being investigated as acts of terrorism or have some link to the current hostility in the Gulf area. The suspects in question are either from Africa or the Middle East.

On March 1, a gunman opened fire at a bar in Austin, Texas, killing two and injuring several others. The suspect is identified as Ndiaga Diagne, a naturalized U.S. citizen who immigrated from Senegal, wearing a T-shirt with the Iranian flag and a hoodie that read “Property of Allah.”

On March 12, Lebanese-born American citizen Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, reportedly angered after losing family members in Lebanon due to recent Israeli strikes, is suspected of attacking a Jewish synagogue in Michigan. That same day, suspect Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a naturalized citizen from Sierra Leone, allegedly opened fire on the campus of Old Dominion University. The former Virginia National Guard member had become radicalized by ISIS and was previously convicted in 2017 of aiding a terrorist group.

Trump’s suggestion that genetics played a role in the series of violent attacks in the U.S. follows countless statements the president has made about having good genes and the suggestion he has a high IQ, and others, typically Black and Brown people, have “low IQs.” Trump made similar remarks about genetics in 2024, telling conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt, “we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.” 

According to the National Human Genome Research Institute, eugenics was a “scientifically erroneous and immoral theory” that gained popularity during the 1900s. It was specifically used to justify scientific racism and the idea that white Europeans were superior to non-white people who were socially and economically marginalized.

In the United States, eugenics was used to justify slavery and overall racist attitudes against African Americans, as well as anti-immigration policies targeting Hispanics and Asians.

“Eugenic theories and scientific racism drew support from contemporary xenophobia, antisemitism, sexism, colonialism and imperialism, as well as justifications of slavery, particularly in the United States,” said NHGRI.

As Dr. Rana A. Hogarth, associate professor of history at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, points out in her research published by the National Institutes of Health, African Americans were targets of eugenic studies and were cast as “inherently unfit.”

“Eugenicists saw Blackness as a heritable trait that signaled a lack of vitality, innate promiscuity, and low achievement,” said Hogarth.

Those racist theories were ultimately published by white physicians in medical papers and were used to justify the steralization of African-Americans, most notably Black women.

“More concretely, eugenics aims to reproduce ‘desirable’ traits and remove ‘undesirable’ ones from the population. This practice demonizes people who are seen as undesirable by dominant society, specifically BIPOC communities, poor and disenfranchised people, those who are physically and/or developmentally disabled, immigrants, mentally ill people, and more,” says an academic article published by Amherst College.

“Eugenics is an effort to suppress and eventually remove marginalized people from our world. The forced and coerced sterilization of Black women is one of many examples of the rising popularity of eugenics in the 1930s.”