Trump Embraces His 'S---hole Countries' Remark From 2018

President Trump admitted Tuesday that he used the slur "s---hole countries" to disparage Haiti and African nations during a 2018 meeting with lawmakers, bragging about a comment that sparked global outrage during his first term, the AP reports. Back then, Trump had denied making the contemptuous statement during a closed-door meeting, but on Tuesday, he showed little compunction reliving it during a rally in Pennsylvania. He went on to further disparage Somalia as "filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime." Trump was boasting in his speech that he had last week "announced a permanent pause on Third World migration, including from hellholes like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia, and many other countries," when someone in the crowd yelled out the 2018 remark.

That prompted him to recall the 2018 incident. His telling hewed closely to the description offered at the time by people who were briefed on the Oval Office meeting. "We had a meeting and I said, 'Why is it we only take people from s---hole countries,' right? 'Why can't we have some people from Norway, Sweden?'" Trump told rallygoers. "But we always take people from Somalia," he continued. "Places that are a disaster. Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime." The White House at the time did not deny Trump's remarks, but the president posted on Twitter the day after the news broke that "this was not the language I used." He added that he "never said anything derogatory about Haitians."

Back in 2018, Trump's comments denigrating predominantly Black nations while seeking more migration from predominantly white countries were widely denounced as racist. Some congressional Republicans condemned the comments, and foreign leaders were outraged. But since then, Trump has pushed past many norms and traditions of decorum that had guided his predecessors, both in his first term and in the years since. The Pennsylvania event was ostensibly about the issue of "affordability" that is currently plaguing Trump's administration, but the AP reports the president strayed a bit from the topics of the economy, cost of living, and combating inflation. More on his speech here.