Trump Admits He Only Wants White People to Come to the U.S.
Trump is bringing back his “greatest” hits on immigration in his current presidential campaign.
Remember in 2018, when he referred to immigrants from places such as Haiti as “people from shithole countries” and wondered why more immigrants weren’t coming from places like Norway? Well, at a private fundraiser over the weekend, Trump made a callback to those remarks, once again lamenting where immigrants to America come from.
At a multimillion-dollar event in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump complained that immigrants weren’t coming from “nice” countries “like Denmark,” according to The New York Times, which got an account of the event from one attendee. He even suggested that the wealthy guests at the event, hosted at a mansion owned by billionaire John Paulson, weren’t safe from nearby undocumented immigrants.
“These are people coming in from prisons and jails. They’re coming in from just unbelievable places and countries, countries that are a disaster,” Trump said, the Times reported.
“I said [in 2018], you know, ‘Why can’t we allow people to come in from nice countries, I’m trying to be nice,’” he continued, to reported chuckles from the crowd. “Nice countries, you know like Denmark, Switzerland? Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway?”
The setting of the event was also interesting: Guests were seated outdoors at white-clothed tables under a white tent, looking out over the body of water that separates wealthy Palm Beach (98.3 percent white, according to census estimates) from the more diverse city of West Palm Beach, where nearly a third of the population is Black and almost a quarter is Hispanic.
“In fact, I don’t think they’re on this island, but I know they’re on that island right there. That’s West Palm,” Trump at one point said during his speech, gesturing across the water. “Congratulations over there. But they’ll be here. Eventually, they’ll be here.”
Trump also mentioned immigrants from the Middle East, noting that immigrants were arriving from Yemen, “where they’re blowing each other up all over the place.”
All of Trump’s rhetoric and policies have been based on racism from the time he began seriously campaigning for president in 2015. Who could forget his first campaign speech, after he descended his golden escalator? He claimed that Mexico was “sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
Trump either fails to realize or refuses to admit that immigrants move to different countries for better lives, For example, his preferred origin for immigrants, Denmark, ranks sixth in the world in the United Nations’ Human Development Index, which is based on factors such as life expectancy, literacy rate, access to electricity, GDP per capita, income inequality, and others. In contrast, the U.S. is ranked twentieth.