All you have to do is start out working for an American farmer
Trump suggests undocumented farm workers are ‘naturally’ designed for field work
“We can’t let our farmers not have anybody,” the president added.
After claiming that Americans who “live in the inner city” won’t do farm work, Trump argued, “They’ve tried. We’ve tried. Everybody’s tried. They don’t do it. These people do it naturally.
Naturally. I said, ‘What happens’ — to a farmer the other day — ‘What happens if they get a bad back?’ He said, ‘They don’t get a bad back, sir, because if they get a bad back, they die.’ I said, ‘That’s interesting.’ ... In many ways, they’re very, very special people.”
For now, let’s not dwell on the fact that the president, who has an unfortunate habit of
sharing the details of conversations that never occurred, probably didn’t have this conversation with a farmer “the other day.” It’s far easier to believe that Trump just made all of this up. (The “sir” is a tell.)
Let’s instead dwell on the fact that Trump seemed to suggest that immigrants are “naturally” designed for farm work.
If that rhetoric sounds at all familiar, it is not your imagination. Last fall, about a month before Election Day 2024:
Indeed, this was a staple of the Republican’s 2024 messaging, complaining about undocumented immigrants “
poisoning the blood of our country” and the degree to which the U.S. was dealing with those with “
bad genes.”
“Hispanic people have been supportive of me like no other candidate,” the Republican claimed, adding, “They’re great people. They work so hard. They are very, very entrepreneurial, always have been, always will be. See, that’s genetics, too. You know, we talked about genetics before. That’s genetics, too.”
The president's perspective on the issue appears to be getting worse.