Of course, only an asshole like him would do so.
President Trump’s dismissal of Haiti, El Salvador and all of Africa as ‘shithole countries’ whose inhabitants are not desirable for U.S. immigration shocked people around the world and provoked swift condemnation.
The president made the remarks Thursday during a White House meeting with lawmakers and suggested immigrants from Norway or Asia would be preferable.
(Washington Post, January 12, 2018)
If you are shocked or even disappointed by this, you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years.
After all, Trump showed he’s a racist in 2011 when he appointed himself the Grand Wizard of Birtherism. That movement has white nationalists still peddling the demonstrable lie that Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States, is an African fraud — a strain of white nationalism that later erupted at Charlottesville.
He then reinforced his true colors in 2015 when he launched his presidential campaign. Because he did so by scapegoating Mexicans as rapists and insisting that he had to build a wall to keep them out.
Yet, despite all this, Americans elected him president. And so, ask not if Trump is a racist, ask why so many Americans continue to defend and support him.
iPINIONS made all of this plain the night Trump was elected. That 2016 commentary argued his victory said far more about white racism than white anger, warned against feckless street protests, and noted the bitter irony of whites who had voted for Obama in 2008 as racial absolution now feeling free to indulge their prejudices without consequence.
The only consolation on offer was that America had survived far worse.
Meanwhile, the Post ran what seems a clever cartoon showing Trump sticking out his tongue for his physical, which is scheduled for today — as covered in “Trump Gets Physical.” The cartoon is captioned “Trump’s ‘shithole’ slip of the tongue.” The kicker is that it shows KKK hoodies popping up like racist warts all over his tongue as the doctor examines it.
The problem, however, is that this was no slip. It was just another symptom of the racism that afflicts Trump to the core. This is why, instead of Make America Great Again (#MAGA), his presidential slogan should be Make America White Again (#MAWA); you know, like it was during the 1950s.
But the remedy is not feckless outrage — complete with politicians tweeting platitudes about diversity. It’s either Congress impeaching him or voters rejecting him.
Unfortunately, the Republican-controlled Congress seems determined to enable even his racist vices. Therefore, the only way to excise the cancer Trump represents on the body politic is for voters to
- vote Republicans out in Congressional mid-term elections this year
- vote him out in the 2020 presidential election, punctuating their disgust by handing him the most humiliating defeat in history.
So here’s to Democrats, Independents, and (conscientious) Republicans, who together compose at least 75 percent of the electorate, marching to the polls to do just that!
In the meantime, though, there’s a call worth reiterating — one iPINIONS first made back in 2011 — urging all self-respecting blacks and conscientious whites to begin shunning Trump the way they would any two-bit racist.
That 2011 commentary argued that the rich patrons and Black Hollywood and sports stars Trump liked to feature as props in his one-man freak show should begin shunning him — just as they would David Duke — and that his trademark words deserved to be thrown back in his face: Trump, you’re fired.
NOTE: Kudos to my friend Mary for sharing the drop-the-mic joke about the biggest shithole on this planet being Donald Trump’s mouth.
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