Cleaning up the Oval
This isn’t just about salty language in the Cabinet Room. Surely the walls of the White House have been privy to far worse. It’s the horrifyingly racist mindset — the disturbing glimpse into the mind of Donald Trump — that they illuminate.
As the talk with a bipartisan group of lawmakers turned to restoring protections not just for “Dreamers,” but for immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and some African nations, Trump chimed in with, “Why are we having all these people from s---hole countries come here?”
He suggested the U.S. ought to bring in more people from Norway, presumably fresh in his mind from his Wednesday meeting with that nation’s prime minister.
Then specifically he added, “Why do we need more Haitians?”
Trump yesterday denied using the profanity.
But Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) confirmed on the record, “He said those hateful things, and he said them repeatedly.”
The meeting, Durbin said, left him “sickened” and “heartbroken” — not simply because of the language but he feared it was the end of any possible deal on immigration.
Durbin and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) thought they were bringing Trump an immigration deal he could live with — one that included cutting the visa lottery system and money for Trump’s border wall with Mexico.
It wasn’t, of course, the first time Trump had focused his anger on Haitians or Africans. The New York Times reported that Trump in a meeting with staff last June complained that 15,000 Haitians who had recently traveled to the U.S. “all have AIDS,” and that the 40,000 Nigerians admitted since he was sworn in would never “go back to their huts.”
That a day after his latest racist tirade Trump could stand before the cameras to proclaim Martin Luther King Day surely speaks to an unparalleled level of hypocrisy — even in Washington.
Durbin and fellow Democrats continue to wring their hands. Graham has urged his fellow lawmakers to focus on the outcome. Both should remember the one immutable rule of politics — that revenge is well, you know ...
And the best revenge would be for the good and decent people of both parties to ignore the little man in the Oval Office, put together a fair immigration deal that upholds the best traditions of this country and the moral authority of at least the legislative branch. Just get the deal done.