President Donald Trump on Thursday blamed “the genetics” of assailants in a string of recent attacks across the country. He made the comments after attacks at a university in Virginia and a synagogue in Michigan and nearly a week after an improvised explosive was thrown outside Gracie Mansion in New York City

"They’re sick people, and a lot of them were let in here. They shouldn’t have been let in. Others are just bad. They go bad. Something wrong — there’s something wrong there. The genetics are not exactly, they’re not exactly your genetic," Trump told Fox News Radio's Brian Kilmeade in an interview released Friday. "It’s one of those problems, Brian. It’s a, it’s a terrible thing, and it happens"

Earlier in the interview, Trump called the assailants "sick" and "really demented" people, pointing to U.S. immigration policy under former presidents as the reason they were present in the U.S.

"They came in a lot through Biden, and they came in through other presidents, frankly, and it’s a, it’s a disgrace," the president said