Immigration talks met with intolerant tones in the Oval Office

By Dylan Barker

On the morning of Thursday, Jan. 11, President Donald Trump held an immigration related briefing in the Oval Office. The intention of the briefing was to prepare for future bipartisan discussions on immigration. During the meeting, Trump laid out an ideal agreement on immigration with lawmakers. In the midst of the planning process, Trump was reportedly asked about immigration from  El Salvador, Haiti and African countries. Trump allegedly replied with, “Why are we having all these people from s—hole countries come here?”

Lawmakers were taken aback by Trump’s clearly racist remark. When Trump got word of this quote leaking, he first defended his words by tweeting, “The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used.” Of course, many wondered what the hell President Trump meant by this tweet.

While I was stuck pondering this tweet, he followed up by saying, “Never said anything derogatory about Haitians other than Haiti is, obviously, a very poor and troubled country.” He may hold the defense he didn’t use derogatory language about Haiti, but lawmakers who were in the briefing say otherwise. All the evidence is stacked against Trump. Multiple lawmakers quoting Trump within the meeting — and prior derogatory remarks against foreign countries and their citizens — undoubtedly proves Trump discriminates against not only people of color, but also religious minorities.

Trump’s stance on people of color and religious minorities has been made clear through countless questionable statements. In 2016, on the very day he announced his run for the presidency, Trump called Mexican immigrants rapists and murderers. In later debates, when Trump was questioned about these remarks, he denied them despite the quote being broadcast live throughout the United States. More recently, Trump’s so-called travel ban was blocked by federal judges who claimed it discriminated against Muslims. Trump and his administration denied this claim despite them previously calling the travel ban a “Muslim-ban” on the policy page of Trump’s website. These comments, along with multiple others — especially Trump’s avoidance of condemning the Nazi Party — has rightfully raised questioning of the president’s possible support of racism. This “s—hole” comment is yet another example of how extremely unfit Trump is to be president.

The majority of his comments can be described as blatantly offensive and entirely uncalled for. From his shameless lies to his disgusting ignorance, Trump’s presidency is becoming increasingly unstable and frankly, un-presidential. A man who shows no respect for foreign countries and their citizens, as well as the very citizen he was sworn in to protect, does not belong anywhere near the government, let alone behind the Resolute Desk.

As a society, we no longer become astonished by the things falling out of our president’s mouth. This is sadly due to the ridiculous and often offensive comments from Trump. Suddenly racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia have become normalized because of this. We are better than this. We cannot stand by and allow Trump to drag our country back to the 1950s. No matter how often we hear it, we cannot become numb to the severity of our president’s comments.