U.N. Human Rights Council Turns On Trump Hard After Racist ‘Sh*thole’ Comment

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We all know the president’s poor opinion of those who don’t look like him, with it being essentially what he founded his campaign upon. Some of his first public statements as a candidate were hits on immigrants, with him asserting that if he were to be elected president, he would construct a wall along the entire U.S./ Mexico border, a promise that has not yet turned into reality.

Even still, the world reacted with revulsion when it was revealed on Thursday that the president had allegedly referred to some nations as “sh*thole countries” during a meeting on immigration policy at the White House on Thursday.

After lawmakers floated the possibility of instituting protections for immigrants from countries including El Salvador, Haiti, and some African nations, the president is reported to have commented as follows:

‘Why do we want all these people from ‘shithole countries’ coming here?’

Trump has now offered a not at all credible denial of the reports about his Thursday comments, writing on Twitter that the “language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used.”

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Considering how often the president lies, and considering the fact that it’s been almost a day at this point that the president just left the controversy surrounding his reported remarks alone, this denial shouldn’t really be considered credible.

He didn’t manage to get his denial in before earning condemnation from officials as high ranking as the United Nations Human Rights Council’s spokesperson Rupert Colville. That’s right — the currently serving president of the United States has done something earning condemnation from the literal United Nations.

Colville was clear in his assessment of the situation, commenting according to the Associated Press that if the president really had uttered those words, then “there’s no other word one can use but racist.”

As Colville put it:

‘It legitimizes the targeting of people based on who they are. This isn’t just a story about vulgar language, it’s about opening the door to humanity’s worst side.’

Getting more specific in his assessment of Trump’s comments, Colville commented that the president’s reported comments “go against the universal values the world has been striving so hard to establish since World War II and the Holocaust.”

This incident certainly isn’t the first time that the president has behaved in such a way so as to earn condemnation as a racist. Besides other already mentioned comments, he also, among other instances of objectionable behavior, initially refused to single out white supremacists for special condemnation following a weekend of violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, that ended with three people dead.

Notably, one of the lawmakers present at the Thursday meeting at which the president is reported to have made the comments backed up press reports in comments to reporters on Friday, countering the president’s denials.

Although the world reacted with unsurprising revulsion to the reports of the president’s comments, on a level the comments are also unsurprising considering the president’s history. He has found no problem with claiming, without basis, that immigrant populations harbor large populations of criminals, making that essentially a core part of his platform from the very beginning of his presidential candidacy.

In fact, on Friday, in the course of his Twitter comments about the matter, the president managed to fit in some jabs directed at Haiti, writing that the country is “obviously, a very poor and troubled country.”

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None of this backs up the president’s denials of having referred to nations as “shithole countries.”

Featured Image via Mark Wilson/ Getty Images