Call goes out: ‘Protect Haiti from the devil’
US President Donald Trump has offered a partial denial in public but privately defended his extraordinary remarks in which he denigrated the island nation of Haiti and referred to African countries as ‘‘shitholes’’.
Haitians have reacted with outrage to his comments, which were made on the eve of the anniversary of the 2010 earthquake, one of the deadliest disasters in modern history.
President Jovenel Moise’s government issued a strongly worded statement denouncing what it called a ‘‘racist’’ view of Haitian immigrants and people from African countries.
‘‘The Haitian government condemns in the strongest terms these abhorrent and obnoxious remarks, which, if proven, reflect a totally erroneous and racist view of the Haitian community and its contribution to the United States,’’ it said.
Haitians at home and abroad were stunned, and internet message boards and radio stations were flooded with angry and anguished comments.
‘‘It’s shocking he would say it on the anniversary,’’ said Natacha Joseph, who was selling rice and beans from a basket near the general hospital in downtown Port-au-Prince. ‘‘I will ask Jesus to protect Haiti from the devil, and Trump is the devil.’’
Motorcycle taxi driver Jean-Paul Maxon said he was angry that Trump seemed to be unaware of Haiti’s proud history as the first independent country founded by freed slaves.
‘‘Trump will not last in office. He attacked the wrong nation.’’
Haitian Senator Youri Latortue said the reported remarks were also galling because they came just before the US marks the birthday of civil rights leader King.
Trump said yesterday he was only expressing what many people think but won’t say about immigrants from economically depressed countries, according to a person who spoke with the president as criticism of his comments ricocheted around the globe.
The president spent yesterday making a flurry of calls to friends and outside advisers to judge their reaction to the tempest, said the confidant, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Trump wasn’t apologetic about his inflammatory remarks and denied he was racist, instead blaming the media for distorting his meaning, the confidant said.
However, critics of the president, including some in his own Republican Party, spent the day blasting the vulgar comments he made behind closed doors during a meeting with a group of senators as he rejected a bipartisan immigration deal.
The comments have revived charges that the president is racist, and roiled immigration talks that were already on a tenuous footing.
‘‘The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used,’’ Trump insisted in a series of tweets, pushing back on some depictions of the meeting.
But the president and his advisers notably did not dispute the most controversial of his remarks: using the word ‘‘shithole’’ to describe African nations, and saying he would prefer immigrants from countries like Norway instead.