It's Time to Talk About Trump’s Genetic Obsession, Racism, and the Nazis
On This Day In 2020
Note: Many months ago, we scheduled this topic to run on the OTDI of October 11, based on the anniversary of New York Magazine’s article. Coincidentally, the NYT yesterday reported on Trump’s most recent racist comments. They have now faced fierce backlash for “sanitizing” their assessment of Trump’s racism; some of that criticism was compiled by TNR. Here at OTDI, we believe this topic deserves a less-sanitized examination today, so we first posted it on 10/10.
Trump often brags about his great genes. “I have Ivy League education, smart guy, good genes. I have great genes and all that stuff, which I'm a believer in,” he told a Mississippi crowd in 2016.
In 2020, at a rally in a mostly white town in Minnesota, he told townsfolk: “You have good genes, you know that, right?... A lot of it’s about the genes, isn’t it…? The racehorse theory…You have good genes in Minnesota.”
His comments again seemed racist, and raised questions about Trump’s embrace of the debunked theory of eugenics, which was popular in Nazi Germany.* OTDI 2020, New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait noted Trump’s “lifelong” fixation on the topic: “It is also one of his deepest obsessions and the explanation for the bizarre passivity that has characterized his response to the coronavirus pandemic from the outset.” According to Chait, “Trump (believed he) did not need to learn about the pandemic because he is smart. He did not need to protect himself from (Covid) because he is strong.”
Similarly, “His biographer Michael D’Antonio once explained that Trump disdains exercise and gorges on burgers and junk food because ‘he really believes in genetic gifts. He wants to assume that he can do something that others can’t do simply because of who he is.’ That is not an ideal mentality for the person you’d want to be in charge of … well, anything.”
Time Magazine collected a few of Trump’s superior-genes brags. And they note that even Trump’s staffers fell in line: His Treasury Secretary explained about his boss, “He has perfect genes. He does.”
But, sure enough, even Trump the Magnificent eventually caught Covid—and was likely saved from death only via the transfusion of drugs which weren’t available to the general public yet.
This week’s update: Trump has been amplifying his criticism of others based on their genetics. This time, on Monday, he was complaining that migrants have “bad genes.” And he added, seemingly referring to migrants, “We got a lot of bad genes in our country."
* Okay, so what if Donald has a particular, if misplaced, view of the importance of genes? The problem comes when it starts to influence his policy and his speeches, and thus begins to pervade the thinking of the American public too.
As mentioned, the Nazis had a particular fixation on genes. And there’s just so much of this stuff out there that Donald Trump’s apparent Nazi adulation must be discussed.
As we’ve mentioned before, Trump’s wife alleged that Donald kept Adolf Hitler’s speeches by his bedside. And there have been multiple times Trump’s speeches have sounded Nazi-like in his choices of words and his topics of emphasis. Here are just a few:
You’ve heard Trump talk about “America First.” That expression, since WWI, had primarily been used by the KKK and by Nazi sympathizers. When Trump started using it too, he was asked to consider using something else so as not to get himself lumped with some of the 20th century’s most horrific Americans. But still he persisted. PFIF has the history of that expression; Trump is well aware of it.
Many have compared the love Trump expresses for the American flag to similar propaganda efforts by Nazis and Nazi supporters in this country. Of course the U.S. flag belongs to all Americans, but the way that symbol has been co-opted by Trump is the worrisome parallel.
Famously, after American neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, and after a marcher had murdered one liberal protestor and injured 35 others, Trump proclaimed that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the protests.
This type of rhetoric has been ramping up now that he’s in Campaign ‘24 mode.
Last November, Trump started comparing migrants to rats. “It’s Official: With “Vermin,” Trump Is Now Using Straight-up Nazi Talk,” noted TNR.
In December, Trump noted that immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of our nation, thereby echoing Hitler. Trump again claimed that his phraseology was just a coincidence. But the AP did a nice job of pointing out just how often Trump has used that exact excuse after praising, in some form, despicable bigots like David Duke, and Nick Fuentes, and QAnon adherents, and the Proud Boys, and…the list goes on. At some point, either he’s a lying racist or a remarkably ignorant moron. Or both.
In March, TNR reported that “Trump Apparently Has a List of Things He Loves About Adolf Hitler”
Later in March, Trump called some immigrants “not people” and compared them to animals. Those were also tools in the Nazi playbook.
In May, as the NYT noted, “Former President Donald J. Trump posted a video on Monday afternoon that features images of hypothetical newspaper articles celebrating a 2024 victory for him and referring to ‘the creation of a unified Reich’ under the headline ‘What’s next for America?’” It also included several other equally provocative references. Sure, he eventually took down that video. But his people did put it up in the first place. (Trump claims it was a young intern who did it; but it sure seems odd that he would keep giving young interns the golden keys to his primary campaign messaging, and then not double-check their work before clicking “send.”)
“Trump and GOP repeatedly echo Nazi and far-right ideology as they aim to retake White House,” observed the LA Times.
Just yesterday, it was revealed that Trump will be holding a massive rally at Madison Square Garden, in NYC. Of course it’s innocuous. But some have noted that an American pro-Nazi group also chose MSG for their massive rally in 1939, just as the sixth concentration camp was being built in Europe.
Why does he talk like this? A few theories: 1) It makes it easier to implement his anti-immigrant policies; 2) A certain % of his base are white supremacists, and if he doesn’t appeal to them strongly he might lose the election; 3) Having apparently been steeped in Nazi speeches and lore, his mind doesn’t grasp why it’s wrong that he says what says.
One final note:
As early as 1919, Hitler was writing about the need to physically deport minorities from Germany. Once he become Chancellor, he began implementing a plan to use the military to deport millions of Jews, Gypsies, and others. He spoke of “cleansing” the land and the blood.
As early as 2016, Donald Trump spoke about the need to physically deport 15-20 million people from the United States, using the military.
By 1941, Hitler had found it much harder than expected to actually deport millions of people. “Hitler's goal to expel all Jews from German-occupied areas had not yet been achieved. (So,) the next stage of deportation (became) a shift in the Nazi's Jewish policy from expulsion to mass extermination.” Germany then proceeded to murder 6 million people.
By 2021, by the end of his term, Trump had found it much harder than expected to actually deport millions of people. He has now announced that the next stage in his plan is to win the presidency again, re-start the “bloody” deportation process, and this time…do it more efficiently.
Of course: Obviously Trump ≠ Hitler. And obviously Trump is not a neo-Nazi. There are, though, certain commonalities in their thinking and commentary which one does not find with, for example, Kamala Harris. Or Joe Biden. Or John McCain. Or Barack Obama. Or George Bush. Or…most other figures today who have shouldered key responsibility for the success of the United States.
Dive Deeper
New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait reported on Trump’s genes
The Hill reports Trump’s gene claims echo racial eugenics
Here’s CNN’s Anderson Cooper on the “dark side” of Trump’s ‘good genes’ compliment in Minnesota
CNN had the Hitler-in-the-bedroom report
Pics are from the NPR story “When the Nazis took Manhattan” : Field of Vision, and Library of Congress
Either I never heard his gene theory or I have repressed it. He really a Nazi.