Trump remarks still echoing
WASHINGTON» President Donald Trump offered a partial denial in public but privately defended his extraordinary remarks disparaging Haitians and African countries.
Trump said he was only expressing what many people think but won’t say about immigrants from economically depressed countries, according to a person who spoke to the president as criticism of his comments ricocheted around the globe.
Trump spent Thursday evening calling friends and outside advisers to judge their reaction, said the confidant, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to disclose a private conversation. Trump wasn’t apologetic about the inflammatory remarks and denied he was racist, instead, blaming the media for distorting his meaning.
Critics of the president, including some Republicans, on Friday blasted the vulgar comments made in the Oval Office. In a meeting with a group of senators, Trump had questioned why the U.S. would accept more immigrants from Haiti and “shithole countries” in Africa as he rejected a bipartisan immigration deal, according to one participant and people briefed on the remarkable conversation.
The comments revived charges that Trump is racist and roiled already tenuous immigration talks that REACTIONS: In Africa, a mix of anger and humor. In Norway, the “happiest nation on Earth” likes its situation. » 21A
included discussion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.
“The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used,” Trump insisted in early tweets Friday, pushing back on some depictions of the meeting.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the only Democrat in the room, said Trump had indeed said what he was reported to have said. The remarks, Durbin said, were “vile, hate-filled and clearly racial in their content.” He said Trump used the most vulgar term “more than once.”
On Saturday, Trump sought to blame “all talk and no action” Democrats for lack of an immigration deal.
“I don’t believe the Democrats really want to see a deal on DACA. They are all talk and no action. This is the time but, day by day, they are blowing the one great opportunity they have. Too bad!” Trump tweeted from Florida.
One of the six senators who crafted the bipartisan deal, Democrat Michael Bennet of Colorado, said Saturday that the proposal “has everything the president asked for on the border.” He said if Trump can’t support it, “it’s difficult to see how we could get him to agree to anything that could pass in Congress.”