Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul brushed off suggestions that President Trump holds a racial animus against Haitians because he once supported Paul’s trip to the Caribbean nation to do eye surgeries on poor Haitians.

Paul said on NBC’s “Meet The Press” Sunday that Trump donated money to a medical mission trip Paul took before he was president. Paul did about 200 surgeries on Haitians that allowed them to see while he was on the trip, and he said that’s evidence Trump isn’t prejudiced against the country.

“It is unfair to draw conclusions from a remark that I think wasn't constructive is the least we can say and I think it is unfair to all of a sudden, paint him, well, he's a racist, when I know for a fact he cares very deeply about the people in Haiti because he helped to finance a trip, we were able to give vision back for 200 people in Haiti,” Paul said.

The comments come days after Trump reportedly said Haiti and some African nations are “ shithole countries.”

That remark has led to an onslaught of Democratic lawmakers calling Trump a racist. Paul said that’s not going to help Congress come to a deal on immigration.

“There are a lot of questions that this ultimately intersects with policy, and the only thing I regret from all of this, other than I think some people in the media have gone completely bonkers with, you know, just ad hominem on the president, I want to see an immigration compromise and you can't have an immigration compromise if everybody is out there calling the president a racist,” he said.