A RADIO host has been slammed for victim-blaming after saying a 20-year-old Iowa student murdered while jogging should have used a treadmill.

Wayne Allyn Root made the comments about Mollie Tibbetts during a segment on Newsmax TV.

Tibbetts disappeared while out for an evening jog and was found dead from multiple stab wounds in July.

Cristhian Rivera, a local farmhand accused of living in the US illegally, has been charged with her murder.

Root said: “Go get a treadmill and watch TV and jog. Why are you jogging outdoors where there’s a chance some crazy person can attack you?

"I hate to say this because we have freedom in this world, right, and she had every right to be jogging and to be out and about."

“We don’t live in a country that’s safe. What can I tell you? It’s terrible.”

Root goes on to blame immigrants for the dangers.

“Why isn’t it safe? Because Democrats have an open border and there’s too many bad people coming in to the country.

"Everyone has got to be careful. I jog in a treadmill in my gym. Why are you jogging outdoors?”

Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, a doctor in contemporary American politics and culture writing a book on American fitness, took to Twitter to voice her outrage:

She tweeted: “'Why was she jogging outdoors?' as a way to discredit Mollie Tibbetts fits into a long tradition of discrediting women who dare venture out in public as transgressing their 'natural' place in the domestic sphere and thus deserving what comes to them..."

American blogger Amanda Marcotte said Root’s comments were victim-blaming and irrational.

She wrote: “Only 16% of female homicides are committed by strangers. Over half are by romantic partners. You’re safer jogging than marrying, but bet Root wouldn’t tell women not to marry.”

Rivera has been charged with first-degree murder for Tibbetts' death.

Prosecutors allege that Rivera abducted Tibbetts while she was out for an evening run in Brooklyn on July 18, killed her and disposed of her body in the secluded location.

A criminal complaint alleges that Rivera confessed during a lengthy interrogation to following Tibbetts in his car, getting out on foot and chasing after her.

Rivera told investigators that he panicked after Tibbetts threatened to call police on her phone, and he blacked out and later came to when he was unloading her bloody body from the trunk of a car.

He and Tibbetts have no known connections other than that Rivera allegedly told investigators he saw her running previously.

Investigators zeroed in on him as the suspect after obtaining footage from surveillance cameras showing a vehicle connected to him circling the area of Tibbetts' running route.

Rivera faces life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted.

Within hours of the arrest, President Donald Trump seized on the news that Rivera was allegedly in the country illegally to call for stricter immigration laws.