The beam in one's own eye. Cartoon of 12/12/2025 in CTXT.
After nearly eight years of half-hearted denials, Trump confirmed that he did use the phrase "shithole countries" to refer to some countries, including some Africans, during a closed-door meeting with senators on immigration policy in January 2018. Trump asked why the US should accept immigrants from "shithole countries" and directly alluded to Haiti.
In 2018, there was a lot of spin to confuse people, denying in part or twisting statements to further confuse people and cast doubt on the veracity of Trump's statements.
CNN anchor Jake Tapper said at the time: "According to a source close to the meeting, the president did not refer to Haiti as a 'shithole' country, although he DID say that about African countries.... According to the source, what happened was that two different comments by the President were mixed up.
On Tuesday 10 December this year, Trump admitted that he spoke openly about "shithole countries". During a speech in Pennsylvania on economic issues that drifted to other topics, the president said he had "announced a permanent pause in Third World migration, including hellish countries like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia and many others", someone in the audience then shouted:"shithole countries! Trump, laughing, replied, "I didn't say 'shithole country', you did." (Watch at 3:12:30)
But, shortly afterwards, he admitted that in that meeting he asked the senators: "Why do we only take people from shithole countries? Why can't we bring people from Norway, Sweden, just a few? From Denmark, would you mind sending us people? Send us nice people, do you mind? But we always accept people from Somalia. Places that are a mess, aren't they? Dirty, dirty, filthy, disgusting, crime-ridden."(Source).
Trump where he says "nice" he means "white" because he's a fucking racist (in fact, among MAGA supporters there are a lot of white supremacists and you have to give them their dose of hate) and a fervent admirer of the KKK. Trump doesn't want people from "shithole countries" entering the shithole country he's turning his into.
This is nothing more than the umpteenth confirmation that, as time goes by, Trump doesn't give a damn about anything and is going around with the contempt, provocations and low-life insults of a redneck who discovers that a worrying number of people with little, if any, intellectual background are laughing at his "thanks".
Citizens of 39 countries are already banned or partially restricted from entering the United States.
In mid-December, Trump expanded the list of countries that are banned from entering the United States. The final list has grown from 19 to 39 countries to which full or partial restrictions are imposed.
The total entry ban list for Trumplandia has been extended by seven new countries: Syria, Laos, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and South Sudan. Laos and Sierra Leone, which until now were already subject to partial restrictions.
The new list also includes 15 new countries with partial restrictions: Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Dominica, Gabon, Gambia, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Tonga, Zimbabwe and Zambia.
Plans to poke (even more) into the private and personal lives of visitors
In addition, as reported in The New York Times, the US also plans to examine the social media history of foreign tourists. Even visitors from countries such as the UK and France, whose citizens do not require visas, would have to share at least the last five years of social media activity for monitoring.
The change would affect visitors who qualify for the visa waiver programme, which allows citizens of 42 countries to travel to the United States for up to 90 days without a visa, provided they first obtain an electronic travel authorisation.
According to the NYT, in a document filed Tuesday in the Federal Register, the C.B.P. plans to ask applicants for a long list of personal data, including social networks, email addresses from the past decade and the names, dates of birth, places of residence and places of birth of parents, spouses, siblings and children.
