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CNN's Epic Meltdown Over Trump's 'S**thole Countries' Remark Was A Sight To Behold

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  January 12, 2018 5:30 PM

It doesn’t take much to set off the media. It really doesn’t. Last night, the entire media establishment went into full meltdown mode because the president reportedly asked why are we allowing people from ‘sh*thole countries’ to come here. This is anonymously sourced. It really hasn’t been verified, and no—Dick Durbin is not a credible source, having lied about White House meetings before. Regardless, CNN blew a gasket. Anderson Cooper cried, Chris Cuomo decided to take this lecture to the white board, and Don Lemon’s program was off the hinges.

  

CNN’s Cooper and Jim Acosta called the remarks racist (via The Hill):

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper slammed President Trump for reportedly referring to Haiti and several African nations as "shithole countries" on Thursday, calling the remarks "racist."

In a monologue delivered on "Anderson Cooper 360," the CNN host said it was important for members of the news media to point out that Trump's remarks were not "racially charged" or offensive, but rather "racist."

"The president of the United States is tired of so many black people coming to this country. Tired of immigrants from Haiti and Africa being allowed in," Cooper said, reading comments from Trump as reported by The Washington Post.

"Tired of Haitians and Africans, the president went on to say he would like to bring more people from countries like Norway. Norway, whose population is overwhelmingly of Nordic descent. White people, in other words," Cooper said.

Philip Mudd, a former CIA counterterrorism official, decided to spout off racist language, even dropping the N-word, to make a point about past immigrant discrimination, as if that helps move the conversation forward. Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele said Trump was racist. Don Lemon was quite clear on that front last night as well (via Free Beacon):


The President of the United States is racist," Lemon said. "A lot of us already knew that."

Lemon's opening comments come on the heels of reporting that Trump asked during an Oval Office meeting Thursday why the United States is allowing people from "s—hole countries"–referencing Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries–to immigrate to America.

Lemon called the remarks "disgusting."

"But you know what? They’re not shocking, not even really surprising because this is who Donald Trump is. This is what he thinks," Lemon added.

Lemon then went into, what he classified as, past examples of Trump being a racist, and then asked "do I need to go on? I get tired of saying it."

After relaying that some at the White House felt Trump's reported remarks could help him with his base, Lemon muttered, "Jesus."

Chris Cuomo was, well, this:

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Again, we don’t know if this was actually uttered during the immigration negotiations. Durbin says one thing, Graham confirms it, but Sens. Cotton (R-AR) and Perdue (R-GA) don’t recall the “sh*thole” comment being said. Given the news media’s track record in reporting on this White House, err on the side of caution. Yet, let’s be honest. The news media thinks Trump has been racist for a long time. Now, they can rehash it. You can tell by the grin Mr. Lemon had on his face when he opened his show. That theme carried throughout his program, an appalling snobby, and condescending display that is the reason why so many Trump supporters stick with the Donald. It also forced a lot of conservative Republicans on the fence about Trump to vote for him. They may not like him, but when you embody the insufferable self-righteousness that infests our newsrooms today, calling us bigots for merely disagreeing with the liberal point of view, yeah you bet I’ll vote for Trump (and I did).

The second part is the disingenuous parameters of this discussion. It is a fact that some countries are better than others. Sorry folks, Somalia is a failed state (there's another word for it too) and Norway is not. Katie wrote earlier today that a West African sociologist admitted that the whole continent, not just temporary protected status nations or the ones listed in Trump's executive order on immigration, is “sh*t.”

Hitting closer to home, North Korea is a communist hellhole, but South Korea is a vibrant, flourishing modern economy. It’s part of the G-20. They can compete with most European nations. It’s just better. There are countries that are just sh*tholes. It’s the way of the world. And please, if you had to choose between Norway and Haiti, you would choose the former, not this weak sauce response from Joan Walsh last night:

I’m sorry; we’ve heard that Trump has been racist for months. This is just another example of his blunt, and at times, overt political incorrectness. And I don’t trust the media to tell me what is racist and what is not anymore. They’ve actually managed to kill its meaning. Remember when saying Chicago was supposedly a dog whistle. So, let’s go to an area of agreement, leaving out the noise. 

We are a nation of immigrants. I’m an emigrant, being adopted at four months from South Korea. I became a citizen a couple years later. My father’s business—a window manufacturing empire, or at least it was in my mind—was built on the backs of Hispanic immigrants. It allowed me to go to college and graduate without any debt, something for which I am very grateful for. The same goes for my brother and sister, and all three of us were privately educated from lower school through high school. Manufacturing was very good to the Vespa clan.

I worked in my dad’s glass plant for a couple summers in the sweltering heat; the glass oven was heated at 900 degrees, so you can imagine what it was like in the middle of August. I won’t lie. It was great. And believe me, I had a hefty beer account for when fall semester began. These people work hard. After the closing bell, these workers left my dad’s factory to work another job. I think the point here is that people can come from sh*thole countries and become good citizens. That’s what The Federalist’s Ben Domenech touched upon, which is embodied in former President Calvin Coolidge’s ethos about us as a nation. At the same time, he admits that Haiti is a total sh*thole; he’s been there twice:

Let’s be clear about one thing here: Haiti is a shithole. I’ve been there twice. It has a cholera epidemic thanks to the United Nations and a burgeoning child sex trafficking problem thanks to the predilections of evil people. It is really a hellish place. But the whole point of the temporary status welcoming immigrants from these countries is based on them being real shitholes – places so dangerous and awful that we won’t send refugees from them back to the countries because they’ll probably die, or worse. That’s the whole point of granting this policy in the first place.

When this story broke yesterday, people immediately seized upon it as indicative of the president’s racism. That’s wrong – contra Noah Rothman, who maintained without any basis whatsoever that Trump was referring to the entire African continent as opposed to those nations covered by TPS, I’m sure Trump knows the difference between Somalia and Egypt and would not refer to them in the same way. Fresh from his Asia tour late last year, he has no such insults to direct toward those countries. But for those eager to tag him as a white supremacist – as an opinion editor of the Washington Post did yesterday – this was an easy opportunity to do so.

The problem emerges when you actually deal with the question at hand. Witness this back and forth on CNN, where Joan Walsh was caught flat footed when Rich Lowry asks if she’d rather live in Haiti or Norway.  This is an easy question, and pretending otherwise doesn’t help matters. Anti-immigration appetites are fed when people are unwilling to admit the truth about what they are arguing.

[…]

In this case, I’d gladly argue that America has the potential to take people from shithole countries and turn them into great Americans. In fact, America has been doing this for a very long time.

That being said, if you want to come to America and work, the door is open. But you have to come here legally. We’re a nation of laws. Illegal aliens are deported. Period. This shouldn’t be an issue and neither should ICE agents being allowed to do their jobs. Far too often we’ve heard tragic stories of families suffering unspeakable tragedy, usually an illegal murdering a loved one that could have been avoided if that person wasn’t here. One of those stories is Laura Wilkerson, whose son Josh was brutally tortured, tied up, beaten to death, and then set on fire in 2010 by Hermilo Vildo Moralez, an illegal alien from Belize. 

Kate Steinle is another tragic example. Ben Shapiro of the Daily Wire was blunt; Trump is president because illegal aliens are committing crimes and re-entering at will. And it hits close to home, where I live in Virginia, where MS-13 is running rampant. You can be pro-immigration and for a strong border, while supporting federal authorities enforce our immigration laws. Democrats do not see it that way. In fact, even noted anti-Trump media personality and scholar Fareed Zakaria, who is not a hard-core conservative, said that the Democratic Party has swung to the extreme on immigration. Why? Because the Democratic Party has been taken over by urban-based self-righteous elites. 

Before we go, again, this holier than this attitude the media has on this is appalling. I know par for the course, but let’s not kid around here; the news media and the liberal elites have described parts of America that are economically depressed as sh*tholes. Former President Barack Obama criticized former UK Prime Minister for turning Libya into a “sh*t show.” Does that make him racially insensitive? Also, he’s right—Libya is another hellhole nation. 

Is this a problematic statement by the president? Was it just salty language used in a negotiation in which he meant the TPS countries, offering a rough and certainly not eloquent description? All of this based on second hand accounts mind you and none of the people privy to this meeting can agree that he said it. 

Despite the aggressive coverage of these remarks, Trump isn’t going anywhere. He will be president tomorrow. The Access Hollywood tape that was leaked in October of 2015, which catches Trump making graphic remarks about women from a 2005 appearance on the show, was much worse than this remark. Trump will survive it. 

Second, it could muddy the chances of a deal on immigration being hashed out prior to the next week when the government runs out of money. This is politics, folks. It could get nasty. Democrats probably didn’t want to do a deal from the outset, with congressional Republicans equally skeptical. I hope we do have a deal, but idealism and the notion that good can be done in Washington D.C. often ends at the edges of the Potomac. 

Think what you will of the president’s remarks. I’m of the opinion that you can be for immigration enforcement, while providing a path for people who want to work and live here to enter legally. Could the president have used better language? Of course, Obama could have done the same as well. In the meantime, let the media steam, in which case I know they will not dwell on that they’re partially responsible for this situation. Yeah, does anyone remember when they gave Trump $2 billion in free media? So spare us the lectures. 

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UPDATE: Hillary Clinton weighed in; I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.