Yes, there are “shithole countries,” as Trump says

At 8:48 a.m Trump tweeted: “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!” The left-wing meltdown over Trump using bad words to describe bad countries has dominated news coverage for 24 hours and will likely go a while longer. It came after the fake-news purveyor known as the Washington Post reported that Trump referred to some Third World nations as “shithole countries” while in a closed-door meeting.

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

“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” Trump said, according to unidentified sources. The president was supposedly referring to Haiti and African countries. He then said the U.S. should welcome more people from countries like Norway, whose prime minister, Erna Solberg, visited the Oval Office on Wednesday. Obviously, Trump was using “Norway” as shorthand for well-educated, healthy immigrants who don’t defecate in public. But even if Trump did call Haiti and various African nations “shithole countries,” so what? He’s right. They are. Haiti, for example, is a terrible, perennially messed up country that sane people try to avoid. If ever a country could be described in scatological terms, it’s Haiti. Haitians have been living in desperate, grinding poverty more or less continuously since Toussaint L’Ouverture, the “black Napoleon,” led a revolutionary uprising that won Haiti independence from France in 1804. Today it is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Life there is cheap and miserable. Almost 60 percent of the population lives in poverty and illiteracy and disease run rampant. Haitians agree Haiti is a shithole country which is why they desperately try to escape it.

This video is no longer available.

Fox’s Tucker Carlson defended Trump’s reported remarks. The president “said something that almost every single person in America actually agrees with — an awful lot of immigrants come to this country from other places that aren’t very nice. Those places are dangerous, they’re dirty, they’re corrupt, and they’re poor, and that’s the main reason those immigrants are trying to come here, and you would, too, if you lived there.” Carlson continued:

Of course you can have a debate over what countries we ought to admit immigrants from, and I think we are kind of having that debate, but what bothers me about the explosion this afternoon is the dishonesty in it. … If we have gotten to the point where we all have to pretend that every country is exactly as nice as every other country, then we are being dishonest.

President Trump needs to keep speaking the truth. Remember that it was candidate Trump’s refreshing, disarming honesty about immigration, specifically, about the undesirables sneaking across the border with Mexico, that launched his candidacy in June 2015 and earned him the undying enmity of the Left. Speaking truth to power, Trump said:

The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems. … When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us [sic]. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

God bless him.