“Why are we having these people from shithole countries come here?” Trump was reported to say during a Thursday meeting with congressional leaders across the aisle on making a deal to legalize “Dreamers”. On Thursday, the Washington Post reported that Trump told lawmakers during the meeting on immigration and that the United States should block immigrants from “shithole” countries like Haiti. Strangely enough, WaPo decided to identify the unidentified people who’ve made this claim as “several people” who “briefed on the meeting”. However, President Trump has come out to vehemently deny the reported unpresidential rhetoric this Friday morning:
The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used. What was really tough was the outlandish proposal made--a big setback for DACA!
--Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
January 12, 2018 In fact, he claims the eventful media skirmish last night was wound up Democrats:
Never said anything derogatory about Haitians other than Haiti is, obviously, a very poor and troubled country. Never said “take them out”. Made up by Dems. I have a wonderful relationship with Haitians. Probably should record future meetings-- unfortunately, no trust!
--Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
January 12, 2018 Whether or not his derogatory statement is true or not is not at all justified. The truth is dwindling, and it certainly doesn’t help when WaPo comes out with what could be a false report with unjustly espoused claims. Recent fallout from former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has made clear that two Senators, Tom Cotton and David Perdue have said that Donald Trump didn’t say such comments. If the what he said was true, why didn’t the Democrats just have a face off with President Trump right then and there instead of waiting almost a day later? If the Democrats handled the President’s comments at the meeting, it would’ve became explosive, there would be solid evidence, and we’d know about it as a matter of fact right now. The media would’ve been dying to gape over the President’s immediate banishment. Instead, we have WaPo who crafted a loose article with no backing. WaPo fails to provide any namely sources and clear, rock-hard evidence to suit their claim of the President’s supposed comments. The entire article is a sappy, gossip-infused read. WaPo went on to say that Trump “grew frustrated with lawmakers thursday in the Oval Office when they discussed protecting immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries as part of the bipartisan immigration deal, according to several people briefed on the meeting.” Moreover, at another point WaPo identified its sources as “people familiar with the meeting”. This is a prime example of untrustworthy journalism. Notice how their report is driven by feeling. There is no clear evidence that President Trump grew frustrated with lawmakers, we’re just all supposed to believe that claim. Being frustrated or seeing somebody who’s frustrated can be perceived differently amongst many since frustration is a feeling and, for the most part, is internal. There’s no possible way to validate if the President fits WaPo’s definition of frustration. The President didn’t seem to be yelling at the opposite side of the table, and he certainly wasn’t about to reach across the table to strangle Sneaky Dianne Feinstein. The public didn’t physically witness the President undergo any feeling of frustration. WaPo is only making an absurd assumption. I can imagine, that in large part, people would have a hard time believing the President grew frustrated at the meeting. The American public had an inside look at what seemed to be a civilized, calm, successful discussion on immigration. It was so impressive and refreshing to see deeply polarized sides join together, engaging themselves in an open dialogue. To the Right’s surprise, CNN huddled over to President Trump for a bit. CNN’s Dana Bash said she’ll “get hit for this,” but said the meeting was what “many people thought Donald Trump was capable of”. According to the President himself, a lot of anchors sent in letters saying that the immigration meeting was one of the greatest meetings they’ve ever witnessed. On another note, prized journalists don’t use shadowy, nameless, faceless figures as their sources of evidence. Who exactly are the “several people briefed on the meeting”? Who are the “people familiar with the meeting”? WaPo refuses to expand on that, and we should refuse to treat their report for what it is at face value. Thanks to WaPo, America is having a field day full of political gossip. As a result, of course, every major news organization glossed over WaPo’s nameless sources, took the headline, and ran with the report as if it were entirely factual. The media lost their sh*t. Honestly, I personally cannot believe how melodramatic the media became. Let’s say what President Trump did in fact say what WaPo reported. If the statement is true, it wouldn’t necessarily be wrong. It would only be wrong in the sense that any leader shouldn’t be using that sort of language. Popular conservative commentator, lawyer, and activist, Ben Shapiro laid out his argument nicely on Twitter this morning in which I entirely agree with:
We should all be able to agree to two basic propositions:
(1) It is inarguable that some countries are crappy.
(2) It is bigotry to suggest that all people who want to immigrate from those countries to America are crappy.
--Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro)
January 12, 2018 In my perspective, and I think in a lot of the Right’s perspective, the statement of suggesting that shithole countries exist, as Trump may have suggested, is inevitably true. However, the media swung at Trump as if what he supposedly said was a racial slur. To say that one’s country of origin is shitty, with good reason, isn’t an insult. It’s innocuous. When people argue this, we have to think of the argument in two ways:
1. As Ben said, it is bigotry to suggest that all people who want to immigrate from shithole countries to America are crappy people.
2. It is also false to suggest that an insult to a particular country is also an insult to an entire race of people living in that country. A country and its people correlate in the sense that everybody shares a same set of values that the country upholds. Some countries don’t share American values of freedom, and we should righteously be attentive towards that characteristic of any particular country. However, a country and its people shouldn’t be mistakenly conflated when one is insulted and not the other. Those who believe that have a stereotype in their mind on what they think a country may be like, when in reality their perceptions may not be entirely true.
This brings me to my next vital point. WaPo has also reported the President aimed his doubts towards not only Haiti, but El Salvador and African countries. In addition, the report states that the President also wondered why America doesn’t instead take in more immigrants from places like Norway. If Trump did say this, he wouldn’t be entirely wrong here either. Immigrants migrating into the United States has nothing to do with race but everything to do with culture. There is no such thing as coexisting if one side refuses to reject basic American ideals and principles. Maybe the President could’ve reworded is argument here, but in some respects, countries that are down the list of decent living standards will be at a disadvantage compared to developed countries. Developed meaning a country has a soaring, robust economy, and that country has embraced freedom for its people. If a country champions freedom, so will its people. If not, who knows what kind of principles an individual upholds. Truthfully speaking, sometimes one’s views may not be compatible with Western ideology. Just to show how mindfully absent the left is on this issue, the left’s vile queen, Hillary Clinton, came out with this on Twitter earlier this afternoon:
“The anniversary of the devastating earthquakes 8 years ago is a day to remember the tragedy, honor the resilient people of Haiti, & affirm America’s commitment to helping our neighbors. Instead, we’re subjected to Trump’s ignorant, racist views of anyone who doesn’t look like him”
--Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton)
January 12, 2018 So, does everybody in Norway share the same skin color as Donald Trump? As of 2017 there were about 36,700 Pakistani immigrants living in Norway; 32,304 from Iraq; 22,982 from the Philippines; 22,658 from Vietnam; 22,285 from Syria; 21,364 from Iran; and 19,560 people from Afghanistan. If one honestly believes everybody from Norway is white, then they must be undercover racists. Any immigration system should be designed to fit a country’s basic set of values, and to not cherry pick individuals based on race.
Last Thursday evening, host Dumb Lemon...excuse me, Don Lemon, was on a roll with the predictable left moral outrage during CNN Tonight last night. Lemon declared the President a “racist” for his rumoured remarks. And to top it all off, Lemon went off into a bunch of false innuendos which diluted the rationale of his entire Trump-is-a-racist argument. For everyone who continues to offer the same “tired, lazy, uninformed, uneducated, ignorant response,” Lemon says, “You know what you can go do?” Lemon asked, “I can’t say that, but you can go read a book, a history book. Because you might learn that people from some of those shithole countries were slaves who were brought here by force to help build this country and then start your learning process from there.”
Here we go again with the hammering, rapid fire blanket criticisms against an entire support base, which of course mostly consists of the millions of Americans who ended up voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. To hold the average, common American accountable to the same stakes as the the President himself for his own comments is preposterous. You can disagree with what others may think, but you don’t get to express scorn for those you disagree with by telling them that they’re uneducated. Maybe they have different principles than you, or maybe they have different sources of information, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re uneducated. That’s how an average American feels like when somebody personally attacks them like Don Lemon did last night, and that divisive message emanates throughout the field of Average-Joes. Still, a year later, CNN and others are still flummoxed on how to exactly argue their points, leaving their commentary open to countless refutations by the American people. CNN and other media elitists fulfilled this same exact tactic after the election, but I guess they haven’t learned the outcome quite yet. But of course, to the left, nobody can just disagree on everything and hold a civil discussion. That doesn’t stand a chance. We all have to embrace leftism with no common grounds or in-betweens. The left has almost become militant. Really, they appear to be a bunch of renegades who jettison the proclivity for basic American principles. A basic principle that we all have to understand here, is that we have to respectfully consider each other’s differences in an American democracy to engage in some level of compromise. We can’t change our race, and we should all respect that of each other, but we can all simultaneously change our harsh attitudes towards each other to become more open towards opposing viewpoints in order to discuss instead of being intellectually shallow on each other’s platforms. “Differences” doesn’t only include race and a book’s cover. Don Lemon went full SJW race power mode last night. He shifted this notion of the President being a so-called “racist” into “we can’t call Haiti a shithole country because, you know what? Slaves came from Haiti years ago.” Don, you can’t fight the supposed racist Trump-force with racism. I really want to know if he’s suggesting that all American-Haitians were former American slaves, or is that just a racist implication that he has in the back of his mind? Because let’s not mind the fact that plenty of Haitians came thereafter to work hard and succeed, living a prosperous life here in the United States. The United States is the greatest nation on Earth and people work hard to come here. Immigrants don’t need to be thought as individuals cloistered into a corner, coddled as defenseless, meek victims. Countries can be considered and classified as shithole countries because they are. It’s not the people who are shitholes, it’s their governments. It’s not the people’s fault, they just so happen to be living inside a shithole. Governments who fail to serve their people, experiencing low life expectancies and low rates of GDP, are naturally shithole countries. There’s a problem when there’s great disparity between those in charge within a subversive established system, and those who fall underneath. If anything, Don Lemon should pick up a history book, and maybe he would learn the fact that between 1980 and 2000, the Haitian-born population residing in the United States has more than quadrupled from 92,000 to 419,000. Why? As the country descended into absolute chaos following the collapse of the Duvalier dictatorship in the late 1980’s, Haitians began to arrive in the United States in larger numbers than before. I’m also curious to know how the left would’ve reacted if the President had said this about North Korea. This is where their argument would fall apart, because North Korea is a shithole country without a doubt. So, would they claim that the President is racist against North Koreans?
In the end, America shouldn’t be arguing about this. If we continue to do this back and forth, useless, tit-for-tat exchange with the left, everything will remain as stupid as it was yesterday. However, the role of the President should include to watch what he or she says, and to filter words in their mind before it becomes public knowledge. Doing so would help President Trump become more characterlogically sound. If the President had actually said what WaPo reports he supposedly said, in the words of Mike Huckabee, “If he had said that, then FLOTUS should have fed him a bar of Ivory soap for breakfast this morning.” Let’s hope this fallout isn’t true, but please watch your mouth, Mr. President.