"Not racial. Not racially charged. Racist." Thursday seems to have marked a turning point in news coverage of Donald J. Trump, American president. The Washington Post reported late in the afternoon that, during an immigration discussion with a group of bipartisan lawmakers in the Oval Office, the Very Stable Genius shared his views on other parts of the world and who ought to be allowed to come to the United States:

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.@NBCNews source: As Durbin explained how deal would impact ppl from Haiti, Trump said, "Haiti? Why do we want people from Haiti here?" Then they got Africa. 'Why do we want these people from all these shithole countries here? We should have more people from places like Norway." — Christina Wilkie (@christinawilkie) January 11, 2018

The response from, well, everyone was immediate. After all, the message was clear: For the President of the United States, Norwegians—white people—are welcome in America. Black and brown people from Haiti, El Salvador, and the many nations of Africa are not. But it was the coverage in places like Anderson Cooper's primetime CNN show that stuck out. Cable news anchors have always been among the most reluctant to use terms like "lie" and "racist" when describing political figures and what they've said. But not last night. Cooper delivered a stirring monologue that pulled no punches. He even included an explicit rejection of dodge terms like "racially charged":

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Anderson Cooper: "Not racial. Not racially charged. Racist ... The sentiment the President expressed today is a racist sentiment" https://t.co/uZZKQOhfTv — Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) January 12, 2018

He is exactly right, and that quote from James Baldwin has never been more prescient. The president is profoundly ignorant in any number of ways. He is almost completely incurious about the world. He has no real knowledge or expertise, and often disdains those who do. He does not read books—or newspapers, or much of anything else—and before he became president, he rarely traveled abroad despite his substantial means. He is wary of the world outside of own properties, and possibly afraid of it.

That's how Trump can dismiss all 54 countries of an entire continent—the world's second-largest by area—as "shitholes." And it's how, as Cooper highlights, he can dismiss the contributions of people who come to America from these countries and their children. Just take Haiti: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Roxane Gay, Wyclef Jean, and Mia Love (the first black female Republican elected to Congress) are all Haitian-Americans. Do their stories and accomplishments count for nothing because we have elected a president who simply doesn't know anything, and cares less?

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As Cooper reminded us, just last month, The New York Times reported Trump said Haitian immigrants "all have AIDS," and that Nigerian immigrants, once here, would never "go back to their huts in Africa." Nigeria's is the largest economy in Africa and the 21st-largest in the world by nominal GDP. And then there's this:

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43% of immigrants from “shithole” African countries have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 33% of the overall American population.



“Nigerian-Americans, for instance, have a median household income well above the American average.”https://t.co/Vmk3vkOLyd — Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) January 11, 2018

As Cooper's colleague, Don Lemon put it, these sentiments are "disgusting," but sadly not surprising. Lemon went a step further, however. Trump's comments were not merely racist, in his estimation. He began his show with a simple declaration: "The President of the United States is racist."



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Within five minutes of announcing his candidacy, Trump characterized the vast majority of immigrants from Mexico as rapists and criminals. (Some, he assumed, were good people.) Trump launched his political career with a campaign to prove the first black president was not an American citizen, and thus illegitimate. He reportedly still believes this. He has shared disgusting propaganda about "black-on-white crime," and frequently characterized black neighborhoods in America's cities as hopelessly crime-infested war zones. One can even imagine him using the term "shithole."

Trump has spread the false claim, incessantly, that immigrants are prone to crime when they actually commit violent crimes at lower rates than native born citizens. He has repeatedly tried to institute a ban on immigrants to America based on religion or nationality, playing call-and-return with federal courts in an attempt to draft something that won't be thrown out as unconstitutional. He refused to unequivocally condemn the white supremacists that marched this summer in Charlottesville, partly in his name—even after one of them killed an anti-racist protester in an act of domestic terrorism.

But the "shithole" comment still seemed to be a crystalizing moment for observers. We touched yesterday on the continued damage this disgrace of a presidency is doing to the image and reputation of the United States of America around the world, and we now have more evidence of that from a spokesperson for the U.N.'s High Commissioner for Human Rights:

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U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights spokesperson condemns Pres. Trump's "shocking and shameful" comment: "I'm sorry, but there's no other word one can use but racist." https://t.co/KAz6XArBMd pic.twitter.com/fLBmvLgLN9 — ABC News (@ABC) January 12, 2018

Last night, the word out of the White House was that Trump's crack political team saw no issue with the comments, which they thought would play well with his base. That is probably true, and tells its own story about the dark currents swirling in this country's politics. The best evidence for that was the reaction from Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host who has contorted himself into TV's premier Trumpist in order to fill the chair left by the disgraced Bill O'Reilly.

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The point is not whether Norway is a more developed or "better" place to live than Haiti. The point is that the president believes our immigration system should be tailored to favor (white) Europeans over Africans or South Americans or Caribbean islanders. The American immigration system is not designed around getting more people from "places you might want to visit on vacation," as Carlson put it. It is not even, in the modern era, primarily "merit-based," but that has always been code to Trump's base of supporters anyway. Trump and his team know that, which is why they said last night that this was good politics.

This morning, however, it seems Trump vaguely realizes there's a problem:

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The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used. What was really tough was the outlandish proposal made - a big setback for DACA! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2018

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Never said anything derogatory about Haitians other than Haiti is, obviously, a very poor and troubled country. Never said “take them out.” Made up by Dems. I have a wonderful relationship with Haitians. Probably should record future meetings - unfortunately, no trust! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2018

Earlier this week, Trump reached his 2,000th false or misleading claim in office. This feeble response does nothing to address the assessments from Lemon and Cooper in all their gravity. Cooper, in particular, seemed to harbor a simmering anger beneath his calm facade while discussing Trump's take on Haiti, perhaps because Cooper has his own history with that country:

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Here was Cooper, on the ground in Haiti in the aftermath of a 2010 earthquake that decimated the small island nation eight years ago today, ditching his equipment to carry a young boy to safety when he saw he needed help. It was not just that he helped him, either: at the end of the report, Cooper clarified that the looting he witnessed was only in a two-block area, and that it was not, as far as he'd seen, widespread. In effect, he wanted to be sure not to mislead viewers, using explosive footage, into thinking Haiti was a lawless shithole. He wanted to tell the truth, because he cared what it was and he was there to see it.

Who here is a Real American? The man who disdains foreign lands, and the people who live there, and wants to shut out the world and pretend we are not connected to it through commerce and diplomacy and our shared humanity? Or the one who goes out to learn more about the world, to tell the rest of us more about it, and perhaps even make it just a little bit better? The time has come to decide what kind of country this is. Is it a nation for all people willing to come here, work hard, and adopt the common values of our civil society as they pursue a better life for themselves and their children? Or is it only for Norwegians?

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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