At the White House’s Oval Office on Thursday, while meeting with lawmakers and talking about a bipartisan immigration deal, the US President Donald Trump referred to the immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations, as citizens from “shithole countries” – as several people informed about the gathering assured. This has generated indignation across all the world and made even the UN condemn his speech.
Additionally, after degrading the people of those countries, he added that he preferred immigrants from nations like “Norway.” This led analysts and other experts to consider that the words he picked were pretty racist.
Trump, in front of this, denied those were his exact words in a Friday Twitter post but said that his tone was “though.” However, he never denied he called “shithole countries” to the African and South-American nations.
At the meeting, he wondered why America needed ”more Haitians,” but on Twitter he denied he advised to take the people from that country “out” of the US.
Continuing the tweet, Trump said he had “wonderful relationships” with the Haitian people and that everything was invented by the Democratic Party. When he talked about the further meetings he “should record,” he then added, “unfortunately, no trust!”
The US President tweeted just a moment before he was supposed to sign a proclamation to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which is Monday.
On the other hand, Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, stated on Friday that the President repeatedly said the word “shithole” in the meeting that both, Trump and Mr. Durbin, attended.
The Senator said that the Trump’s denial is “not true,” and referred to the US President’s speech as “hate-filled, vile and racist.”
The White House has not confirmed or denied the president’s words.
“I cannot believe that, in the history of the White House in that Oval Office, any president has ever spoken the words that I personally heard our president speak yesterday,” Mr. Durbin said on Friday.
In another tweet posted by the President on same Friday, he said that the words he used at the DACA meeting were “tough,” but that he never employed the language he assured was created by the Dems. However, he did not comment and explained anything about what he referred to using the word “though,” neither offered any specific account of the meeting.
World organizations reacting
Ebba Kalondo, the spokeswoman for the African Union, said that the group she represents is “frankly alarmed” after the statements offered by “the president of the United States,” in which he referred to the “migrants of African countries and others in such contemptuous terms.”
Kalondo then remarked the “historical reality” of how people from Africa arrived in the United States during the “Atlantic slave trade,” and said that his words flew in “the face of all accepted behavior and practice.”
She then continued expressing how concerned she was after hearing how the president of a “global example” country – made thanks to the strong and diverse product of migration – could dub other nations. Additionally, she said she hopes that the values America is known for due to its “particular experience with migration” will come to bear.
On the same line, the spokesman from the United Nations, Rupert Colville, said that what Trump said was tremendously “racist.”
“There is no other word one can use but ‘racist,’” Colville said at a briefing in Geneva. “You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as ‘shitholes,’ whose entire populations, who are not white, are therefore not welcome.”
Reactions from Haiti
People from Haiti also expressed their anger on the social media. Some of them used the hashtag “ShitHolePresident,” and posted photos of beautiful beaches, and colorful sunsets behind palm trees.
The ambassador of Haiti in America said that he condemned Trump’s words, and informed authorities from his country wanted an explanation from US officials.
“In the spirit of the people of Haiti we feel in the statements, if they were made, the president was either misinformed or miseducated about Haiti and its people,” Paul G. Altidor, Haiti’s ambassador, said in a statement. He then added that the Embassy of his country has been receiving plenty of emails from people apologizing after Trump’s words.
The largest newspaper of Haiti commented that the words used by the US President were “racist and disgraceful,” and wrote that no speech should interfere between “nations and people,” even if this came from “the mouth of a president of a nation friendly to Haiti.”
Source: The Washington Post