Jeffrey Epstein was not only a rapist and child predator but also a committed believer in racial eugenics. The recent release of Epstein’s emails and files reveals that he promoted the fraudulent “science” of genetic determinism, circulated white-supremacist material and cultivated relationships with people who argued that intelligence, behavior and social worth are rooted in heredity. That appetite for race science, as shown in Epstein’s correspondence and contacts, is disturbingly similar to the genetic determinism Donald Trump has long expressed and acted upon.
Investigations by outlets such as The Atlantic and Mother Jones uncovered emails showing Epstein attempting to connect with prominent figures in controversial race and intelligence debates, including geneticist James Watson, political scientist Charles Murray and researchers like Joscha Bach. Epstein shared material from overtly white supremacist websites and pushed arguments that purported to show innate, race-based intellectual differences. In some exchanges, those he contacted echoed or entertained deterministic claims about race and cognition; in others, recipients rejected Epstein’s views. But the evidence makes clear Epstein embraced a worldview that placed races in a fixed hierarchy and sought validation from scientific-sounding arguments.
Eugenics—the “race science” that flourished from the late 19th century into the 20th—offered a pseudo-scientific rationale for slavery, colonialism, segregation and forced sterilization. It treated racial categories as biologically discrete and immutable, and it attributed traits like intelligence, criminality and moral worth to heredity. That ideology shaped policies in the United States—tens of thousands were sterilized under state laws—and culminated in Nazi atrocities in which millions were murdered under the rubric of racial purification. The rhetoric of “poisoning the blood” that Nazis used to demonize Jews has eerie echoes in contemporary talk about immigrants “poisoning” a nation’s racial composition.
Epstein’s embrace of eugenics aligned him with a discredited intellectual tradition, but it was not unique among influential figures in recent decades. The Bell Curve (1994), by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein, argued for genetically based differences in intelligence and had a real political payoff: it was used to justify scaling back welfare and other social programs. Though scholars have thoroughly debunked the book’s methods and conclusions, its ideas proved politically useful and continue to circulate among those who want to reduce state support for the poor while blaming poverty on inherited traits.
Epstein sought contact with Murray and others who lent authority to claims about genetic differences. He also corresponded with Watson, who long before became notorious for racist comments, and he funded and promoted certain researchers. Joscha Bach, who received funding from Epstein, wrote in one message that African American children “have slower cognitive development,” a claim Bach later said he did not intend as racist and that he had not conducted the relevant research. Epstein even sent openly white-supremacist articles to people such as Noam Chomsky, who rejected those ideas; Chomsky and his wife later admitted error in maintaining ties to Epstein, though media attention focused far more on Epstein’s sex crimes than on his race politics.
Donald Trump’s public rhetoric and policy choices display similar genetic determinism and racial animus. For decades Trump has boasted that he has “great genes,” called himself a “gene believer” and suggested that genes explain success and failure. He has repeatedly insulted Black leaders and public figures by implying they are of low intelligence, frequently deploying “low IQ” as an epithet aimed disproportionately at Black women and other Black public figures. He has amplified dubious crime statistics and stereotypes about Black criminality in ways that suggest an underlying belief in immutable racial differences.
Trump’s contempt extends to people with disabilities—he mocked a reporter with a physical disability and was reported to have been dismissive of wounded soldiers—illustrating a broader habit of demeaning anyone he sees as weaker or inferior. He often frames such insults ambiguously to allow deniability, but the pattern is consistent and deliberate.
The president’s immigration policies most clearly expose his eugenic inflections. In December 2025 he acknowledged using the term “shithole” to refer to nations in Latin America and Africa, an epithet that accompanied calls for privileging immigrants from predominantly white countries such as Norway, Sweden and Denmark. His administration set a record-low refugee admissions cap for fiscal 2026—7,500 worldwide—effectively excluding most refugees from Africa. At the same time, internal documents and presidential action signaled a push to fast-track applications for white South Africans, with aims to process thousands of such cases per month and an executive order claiming white South Africans deserved expedited consideration. Those moves reflect not merely reactive immigration politics but an explicit preference for white migrants and a devaluation of Black and brown lives.
Trump’s assaults on Barack and Michelle Obama further reveal his racial contempt. He has trafficked in dehumanizing images and conspiracy theories about the Obamas, called Barack Obama mentally and physically inferior, and has trafficked in birtherism and other attacks that seek to delegitimize the nation’s first Black president. Combined with his broader pronouncements about genes and “bad genes” in the country, these attacks form a consistent worldview in which racial hierarchy is naturalized and political.
Contrast Trump’s and Epstein’s pseudo-scientific enthusiasms with the real scientific breakthroughs that have saved and improved many lives. HeLa cells—the immortalized cell line taken without consent from Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman treated at Johns Hopkins in 1951—transformed modern medicine, enabling vaccines and treatments for polio, cancer, HPV, HIV, Covid-19 and many other diseases, and founding fields like virology. The story of Henrietta Lacks is a painful reminder of medical racism and of how Black bodies were exploited even as Black contributions to science went unrecognized and uncompensated. Epstein and Trump, defenders of racial hierarchies, would likely have been indifferent to Lacks’s contribution; it is doubtful either appreciated that HeLa cells originated with an African American woman whose family later sought restitution and recognition.
The politics of eugenics have always relied on the veneer of scientific legitimacy to justify social hierarchies. Real science shows human variation is complex, context-dependent and overwhelmingly shaped by environment, experience and social conditions—not by simplistic racial categories. The modern scientific consensus rejects racial determinism; race is a social construct with biological consequences produced through unequal environments, access and exposure—not a fixed genetic map of worth.
Epstein’s files reveal a determined pursuit of race science and proximity to figures who trafficked in deterministic claims. Trump’s career-long rhetoric and the policies pursued under his administration suggest he, too, views race through a geneticized lens. Whether through elite networks or the instruments of state policy, both men have normalized ideas that echo the darkest chapters of eugenics history.
I argue that Trump is the most intellectually incurious, ill-informed and vacuous president in US history—unable or unwilling to accept that his wealth and status, rather than any “right genes,” propelled his rise. His worldview is rooted in a lifetime of race, gender and class privilege, not in any demonstrable genetic superiority.
[TomDispatch first published this piece.]
[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
