A few hundred protesters gathered near President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday to protest his reported recent remarks referring to Haiti, El Salvador and certain African nations as “shithole countries.”
Trump, who visited one of his golf clubs on Martin Luther King Jr. Day before flying back to Washington, has been facing bipartisan backlash since allegedly making the comment in an Oval Office meeting on immigration reform last week. Haitian-Americans and their supporters waived Haitian flags and chanted in English and Haitian Creole near his “winter White House,” according to local reports.
“What do we want? Apology!” the protesters called.
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Trump supporters also gathered in Palm Beach, waving American flags and “Trump 2020” banners.
“I’m here to encourage my president and let him know he’s doing a good job, and just because he used a word doesn’t change that,” Cindy Levegetto, of Boynton Beach, told the Sun-Sentinel.
She added that so many Haitians immigrated to the United States “because they believe the same thing about Haiti the president believes. If they would realize that, they wouldn’t be so offended.”
But Indiana resident Phoebe Crane told the paper that such vulgar comments are “not what our founding fathers” wanted.
“I had to come out because of the president’s incredibly racist, bigoted and depressing remarks,” Crane said. “This is just setting our country backward. This is not who we are. It’s not what our founding fathers intended.”
Trump doubled down on his denial of the remarks in a tweet Monday, attacking Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who confirmed them on the record.