Republican Congresswoman Mia Love (R-Utah) is demanding that President Donald Trump apologize for purported comments he made about people coming to the U.S. from “sh**hole countries.”
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Trump’s comments, which have started a firestorm over the past 12 hours and have been deemed “racist” by scores of his critics, were reportedly uttered during an Oval Office meeting on Thursday about U.S. immigration policies. The Washington Post has more:
President 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 a bipartisan immigration deal, according to several people briefed on the meeting.
“Why are we having all these people from [sh**hole] countries come here?” Trump said, according to these people, referring to countries mentioned by the lawmakers.
Love, who is a Haitian-American, held little back in her rebuke of Trump’s purported remarks, appealing to her parents’ own story of immigrating to the U.S. to push back against the president’s claims.
“The president’s comments are unkind, divisive, elitist, and fly in the face of our nation’s values,” she wrote in a statement. “This behavior is unacceptable from the leader of our nation.”
https://twitter.com/RepMiaLove/status/951603160254238720
Then, Love proceeded to share her family’s’ story:
My parents came from one of those countries but proudly took the oath of allegiance to the United States and took on the responsibilities of everything that being a citizen comes with. They never took a thing from our federal government. They worked hard, paid taxes, and rose from nothing to take care of and provide opportunities for their children. They taught their children to do the same. That’s the American Dream. The President must apologize to both the American people and the nations he so wantonly maligned.
Don Lemon of CNN opens his show by plainly stating the obvious fact that Donald J. Trump is racist.https://t.co/1aHDGGB7lN #p2 #ctl pic.twitter.com/cBsX10Skwx
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) January 12, 2018
Others like CNN’s Don Lemon and Anderson Cooper, called Trump “racist.”
“The president of the United States is racist,” Lemon said at the start of “CNN Tonight.” “A lot of us already knew that.”