The White House vehemently denied a report Saturday that President Trump made wildly offensive comments about immigrants during an Oval Office meeting — where he reportedly said that Haitians “all have AIDS.”

Examining statistics that showed how many foreigners received visas since his inauguration, the president ran through a series of slurs about different groups at the June meeting, the New York Times reported, citing multiple unnamed sources.

Learning that 2,500 Afghanis had entered the US since his inauguration day, Trump referred to the country as a terrorist haven.

The 15,000 Haitians who came here, they “all have AIDS,” he grumbled, the paper reported.

And the 40,000 from Nigeria would find the US so appealing, they would never “go back to their huts” in Africa, the president said, according to the paper, which cited officials who were at the meeting or learned about it shortly afterward.

Press Secretary Sarah Sanders shot down the “outrageous claims,” stating that senior officials who were in the meeting refuted them.

“It’s both sad and telling The New York Times would print the lies of their anonymous ‘sources’ anyway,” Sanders said in a statement.

The White House did not deny that the meeting took place, but said the president never used the words “AIDS” or “huts” to describe people from any country.

The anecdote is part of a lengthy story that details Trump’s attempts to stem the tide of foreigners entering the country, a key campaign promise that was thwarted by judges who stymied his early attempts at banning people from Muslim-majority countries. He reportedly dismissed comments from then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, now his chief of staff, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that many of the people who got visas were short-term visitors, rather than immigrants planning to stay permanently.

Trump’s effort to change U.S. immigration policy has been a disorderly and sometimes dysfunctional process, the Times story noted, but even as he has been frustrated by the limits on presidential power, his plans have gained increasing momentum as the White House became more disciplined. That discipline has included better strategies for ignoring or undercutting the opposition of many working in the government.

“We have taken a giant steamliner barreling full speed,” Stephen Miller, a key aide on this issue, told the Times. “Slowed it, stopped it, begun to turn it around and started sailing in the other direction.”

Critics share that view, the paper reported, but view the results negatively.

“He’s basically saying, ‘You people of color coming to America seeking the American dream are a threat to the white people,’” said Frank Sharry, the executive director of America’s Voice, a pro-immigration group and an outspoken critic of the president. “He’s come into office with an aggressive strategy of trying to reverse the demographic changes underway in America.”