Mother Jones
Donald Trump’s Decades-Long Obsession With Eugenics
Many people were shockedto read allegations last year byDonald Trump’s nephew, Fred Trump III, about his uncle: Fred, whose son William has intellectual and developmental disabilities, reported that the elder Trump said during his first presidential term that people like William should “just die.”
That is shocking—but it’s not surprising. The comment falls into a pattern of eugenicist and ableist views that Trump has espoused all the way back to the 1980s, when he spoke openly about the importance of having “the right genes” in an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show.
The opposition’s failure to address and confront Trump’s eugenicist views, the American studies scholar Susan Currell wrote in a 2019 article, “shows that a wide-ranging eugenic ideology is embedded in the broader American body politic.” The lack of emphasis on Trump’s comments and record around disability and genetics bears that out. Trump makes a lot of outrageous statements—but there’s a pattern to his comments about intelligence (or lack thereof), his intense hostility towards disabled people (including reputed public use of the r-word stretching back decades), and his preoccupation with “good” genes: it’s inseparable from his constant promotion of Afrikaner and Northern European immigration, sympathy to claims of “white genocide,” and promotion of close advisors like Stephen Miller and Elon Musk.
Taken together, that track record illustrates the sitting president’s eugenicist mindset—one that comes into sharp focus in the timeline below.
1980
A former vice president in charge of construction at the Trump Organization alleged in an opinion piece that Trump shouted, “Get rid of the [expletive] braille. No blind people are going to live in Trump Tower,” when an architect showed Trump the planned interior of a new elevator.
Donald Trump at age 33, holding a model of the Fifth Avenue Trump Tower.Bettmann/Getty
1988
While promoting his Art of the Deal, Donald Trump told Oprah Winfrey that “you have to be lucky in the sense to be born with the right genes” in order to be successful.
1999
Trump’s great-nephew William is born with complex disabilities. Despite Trump’s physical proximity, he never bothered to meet William in person—and still hasn’t to this day, Fred Trump III told Mother Jones.
Fred, his son William, and a golden retriever.Courtesy Fred Trump III
2004
Trump has been casually using the R-word publicly for at least two decades, including towards an unnamed golfer in this appearance on the Howard Stern Show—while saying that even that guy said Trump should be paid more on The Apprentice.
TRUMP to HOWARD STERN in September 2004:
"I have a golf pro who's mentally retard ― I mean he's like really not a smart guy." pic.twitter.com/qBQOq2rCQq
— JM Rieger (@RiegerReport) September 5, 2018
2011
Deaf actress and Academy Award winner Marlee Matlin placed second on Celebrity Apprentice. The Daily Beast reported that Trump had made an ableist comment about her deafness to her face, in footage that did not air, and called her “r-tarded” behind her back.
(L-R) Star Jones, Marlee Matlin, Donald Trump, Meat Loaf and John Rich attend a Celebrity Apprentice event at Florence Gould Hall on April 26, 2011 in New York City.Gilbert Carrasquillo/FilmMagic/Zuma
In his book Time to Get Tough: Make America #1 Again, Trump wrote that Social Security disability claims—specifically, that “one out of every twenty people in America now claims disability”—stood in the way of making America great. (That figure is actually quite low, considering around that one in four American adults has a disability.)
2015
In an incident some observers thought would cost him the election, Trump did a cruel, mocking impression of New York Times reporter Serge F. Kovaleski’s disability on the campaign trail. Trump later claimed not to have done so, despite clear video evidence.
2016
Asked who he’d consult with on foreign policy, Trump said himself—as he has “a very good brain.”
2017
Trump claimed that his Cabinet members, yet to be confirmed, had “by far the highest IQ of any Cabinet ever assembled.”
President Donald J. Trump holds a cabinet meeting.Kevin Dietsch/CNP/Zuma
Axios reported that Trump physically mocked both Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, who has long-term health issues related to polio, and the late Sen. John McCain, who has disabilities related to the torture he experienced as a prisoner of war.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and John McCain at a statue unveiling ceremony for former Sen. Barry Goldwater in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall, February 11, 2015. Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/AP
2018
During a trip to Singapore, Trump lauded his uncle, late MIT physicist John Trump, as someone with “good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart.”
John G. Trump, the president’s uncle, sits next to a medical apparatus he helped to develop.MIT Museum/Wikimedia
After the GOP’s failure to repeal part of the Affordable Care Act, Trump approved a Justice Department commitment not to pursue health insurers for failing to cover appropriate care for people with pre-exisiting conditions, which includes all disabled people.
2019
Trump appointed his former physician, Ronny Jackson, to be his chief medical advisor after Jackson said that Trump had “good genes.”
Rear Adm. Ronny JacksonTom Williams/Congressional Quarterly/Newscom/Zuma
Trump branded journalists “degenerate Trump haters”—language that, as my colleague Mark Follman wrote in 2019, “historically has connotations of eugenics and Nazi propaganda.”
People turn to make their feelings known toward the media covering President Donald Trump during a ‘Evangelicals for Trump’ campaign event held at the King Jesus International Ministry in Miami, Florida.Joe Raedle/Getty
2020
Following a May 2020 White House meeting with disability advocates, Trump said to his nephew Fred Trump III that people with complex disabilities “should just die.”
The same month, at a campaign event in Michigan, Trump complimented the “great bloodlines” of Henry Ford, himself a noted eugenicist and virulent bigot who received an award from the Nazi German regime in 1938.
Trump said that his supporters at a Minnesota rally, who appeared to be mostly white and able-bodied, “have good genes”: “A lot of it is about the genes,” he continued, referring to it as the “racehorse theory” and repeating “You have good genes in Minnesota.”
"You have good genes, you know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn't it, don't you believe? The racehorse theory. You think we're so different? You have good genes in Minnesota." — Trump pic.twitter.com/OiF63qZaKx
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 19, 2020
In the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump dismissed the deaths of people with underlying health issues, saying Covid alone “affects virtually nobody”—now a mainstay right-wing talking point.
2023
Kicking off his return to campaigning for the presidency, Trump said that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.”
2024
Instead of criticizing then-President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech for its content, Trump chooses to mock Biden’s stutter.
Trump also referred to both then-President Biden and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris as “mentally impaired.”
Trump: Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way. She was born that way. And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country. pic.twitter.com/v6Yo6uINp5
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 28, 2024
Trump reportedly called Harris the R-word at a Trump Tower penthouse dinner with billionaire donors, according to the New York Times.
In an October radio interview covered by my colleague Isabela Dias, Trump said that migrants coming into the country had “bad genes.”
2025
After January’s fatal plane crash near Reagan Airport in Washington, Trump seemed to blame disabled FAA workers for the collision, rattling off a list of the disabilities he claimed the agency had allowed air traffic controllers to have in a speech that centered on a fixation with “naturally talented geniuses.”
Wreckage of an American Airlines plane is lifted from the Potomac River during recovery efforts near Reagan National Airport, February 3, 2025.Carol Guzy/Zuma
In his first day in office, Trump rolled back diversity, equity, and inclusion programs established under Biden to seek to hire more disabled people, people of color, and LGBTQ people—all of whom face discrimination in hiring processes—into federal positions.
On March 20, Trump signed an executive order—that a judge later blocked—to hollow out the Department of Education, in what he hopes will be a prelude to its complete dismantling. Programs for disabled students have been set to be moved to the Department of Health and Human Services, itself contending with massive, sweeping cuts under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has promoted disinformation about vaccines and autism, among other disabilities.
Trump poses with Secretary of Education Linda McMahon after signing an executive order aimed at shuttering the Department of Education.Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Getty