Despicable Trump reveals his true self as party stays silent
DONALD Trump laid bare his world vision.
To those from wealthy white countries such as Norway, the American dream is all but a few immigration forms away.
But for those from, what he called “sh**hole countries”, any hope of starting a new life in the States would be nothing short of a nightmare.
Anyone from Haiti and the whole of Africa would, if Trump had his way, be prevented from becoming legal aliens in the US.
His comments during a meeting at the White House with both his fellow Republican and opposition Democrats to discuss how to handle immigration left him being branded a racist by the United Nations.
His comments stood for themselves.
“What do we want Haitians here for?” the President reportedly asked.
“Why do we want all these people from Africa here? Why do we want all these people from sh**hole countries?” Then he added: “We should have people from places like Norway.”
The White House quickly issued a statement that didn’t deny the comments, but defended Trump’s efforts to “fight for the American people”.
Trump’s comments were outrageous, immature, inhumane and vulgar – and it shames America that not more was said against them.
To think that the supposed leader of the free world would speak so reductively and heartlessly about so much of the world is unforgivable.
Equally unforgivable is how the once-respected Republicans have now become a party of political puppets for Trump, unashamedly remaining silent and refusing to call out their leader’s bigotry.
And while most of the country felt shame in his racist slurs, he meanwhile was allegedly rejoicing in his comments, calling his flunkies to gloat about what he had said.
At best his remarks show the man – and to some extent the country he leads – to be arrogant, dismissive and isolationist.
At worse, it shows Trump to be despicable, racially and culturally oblivious and ignorant.
Of course, he would go on to deny ever saying such a thing, despite one of those present saying he uttered such “hate-filled things, and he said them repeatedly”.
For Trump is not just racist, incompetent and undignified, he is also a well-known liar.
No one denies that Haiti and some of these other countries have profound problems today.
Of course, those problems are often a direct result of policies and actions of the States and European nations who often enslaved their citizens, plundered their natural resources, propped up their dictators and corrupt regimes, all while holding them financially hostage for generations.
Nevertheless, it is unlikely that the President himself will feel shame.
Instead, he’ll bemoan the “fake news” and try to drag in the 2016 election results and the stock market into the mix while going unpunished for what he said.
What is concerning is not his planned wall on the southern US border or his use of the word “sh**hole”.
It’s what ties all of these things together – the bigoted worldview of the man behind them.
Donald Trump is by no means America’s first racist leader.
But what he did do was run a campaign tinged with bigotry, exclusion and white resentment.
In this week in which America celebrated Martin Luther King Jr Day, it seems the dream the civil rights leader once spoke of is now further away than it has been in a very long time.
Hopes of starting a new life in the States would be nothing short of a nightmare...